What do East and West think?
Alexandrina Guran, PhD
East and West Germany were separate for longer than they have been united again. The economy and infrastructure vary greatly, as we have seen, which influences not only the population´s lives but also their perspectives on matters of politics and feelings of inequality.
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The GDR was a communist dictatorship. In contrast, the West of Germany was organised as a federal parliamentary constitutional republic, with chancellors from both center-right and center-left parties. Surprisingly (or maybe not), right-wing populism has more support in the East than in the West.
Today, the election of the German Bundestag is split into two votes. The “Erststimme” or primary vote can be given to a specific person (with or without party affiliation). Thus, the 299 voting districts in Germany directly elect 299 of the members of the Bundestag. Additionally, and importantly, the “Zweitstime” or secondary vote involves selecting a given list of candidates selected and curated by the parties themselves. This vote, despite its naming, is at least as important as the first: Based on the percentages obtained, the remaining 299 seats of the Bundestag are split across all parties that gained a minimum of 5% of the secondary votes . The AfD (“Alternative für Deutschland“, in English: “Alternative for Germany“) is a relatively new right-wing populist party in Germany. It was founded in 2013, on ideologies of EU-skepticism and German nationalism. It has ties to the far-right scene and right-wing extremist parties. The German domestic intelligence services (“Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz”) consider the AfD a „suspected case” with “factual leads” (“Verdachtsfall mit tatsächlichen Anhaltspunkten”) for right-wing extremism . This map shows the percentage of voters that gave their votes to the AfD. The darker the hue, the higher the percentage of secondary votes to the AfD. Again, the East easily stands out.
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What best explains this trend? Is the East simply more right-wing due to a lack of contact with migrants or as a counter-reaction to the communist dictatorship they endured before reunification?
Here is another map, showing the votes for another German party:
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Again, the East stands out. This time, we are looking at the votes (secondary) for the party “DIE LINKE”, which is the leftmost party represented in the German Bundestag (not the leftmost party that voters can select in elections).
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Interestingly, the pattern is quite similar, albeit much less stark .
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The party “DIE LINKE” got consistently higher votes in the eastern Länder (states).
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From these two findings, we can conclude two things:
1) the population in the East is politically divided.
2) A larger percentage of the East´s population is unhappy with the status quo , also indicated by their reaching out for political extremes , in comparison to the West. Indeed, many surveys suggest that people in the East feel forgotten and misunderstood by the general political goings-on . They feel like their problems are not accounted for – and looking at the maps we saw in the previous section, they may not be wrong.
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Sources
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3: A very valuable resource: Sixtus F, Slupina M, Sütterlin S, Amberger J, Klingholz R. Teilhabeatlas Deutschland. Berlin-Institut f. Bevölkerung u. Entwicklung, Berlin. 2019. https://www.berlin-institut.org/fileadmin/Redaktion/Publikationen/PDF/BI_TeilhabeatlasDeutschland_2019.pdf
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4: This map was generated using http://wahlatlas.net. Although in German, it may prove an interesting tool to explore data.
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5: For connections between unhappiness and right-wing populist voting behaviors, see, e.g. Lindholm A, Lutz G, Green EG. Life Dissatisfaction and the Right-Wing Populist Vote: Evidence from the European Social Survey. American Behavioral Scientist. 2024 Mar 25:00027642241240334. Or Nowakowski A. Do unhappy citizens vote for populism?. European journal of Political economy. 2021 Jun 1;68:101985.
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6: Most sources are in German, however, the following conference paper may be an interesting read: Hu H. Socialised Under Different Regimes or Results of Economic Inequality? An Exploration of the Persistent Differences in Subjective Happiness, Social Values, and Political Attitudes Between the Former East and West Germany. In 2022 4th International Conference on Economic Management and Cultural Industry (ICEMCI 2022) 2022 Dec 27 (pp. 997-1007). Atlantis Press.