A new study has shown populist attitudes in Germany have dropped sharply compared to two years ago. The results indicate parties like the far-right AfD will be pushed toward the political fringe.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Kahnert
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Populism in German politics is on the decline after peaking in 2018, according to a study released Thursday by the Bertelsmann Foundation.
Around 20% of registered voters in Germany are considered to have a "populist mindset," which is a drop from the 2018 figure of 33% of voters who had such a view, according to researchers.
"The trend toward an increasingly populist political climate in Germany has been turned around," said co-author Robert Vehrkamp in a statement.
Bertelsmann's "Populism Barometer," developed in cooperation with YouGov Germany, asked 10,000 voters in June whether they agreed with eight populist statements about the function of state and society.
Populist attitudes in the study include viewing politicians as part of a self-interested "corrupt elite," rejecting compromise or supporting direct sovereignty through referendums. The study also analyzed populist attitudes "within the dimensions of anti-pluralism, anti-establishment and homogeneity of the people."
What does it mean for German politics?
According to the study, the turn away from populism is being supported primarily by voters from Germany's political center. In 2018, this segment of voters showed the greatest increase in populist attitudes.
"The political center, in particular, is proving to be able to learn and to be robust in dealing with the populist temptation, and is thus proving to be the cornerstone of this change in public opinion," Vehrkamp said.
"Liberal democracy has responded to the populist mobilization with a democratic counter-mobilization — especially in the political center," he added.
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AfD is for 'extremists'
The wave of populism in German politics in recent years has corresponded with the rise of anti-establishment parties like the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Traditional political camps, including parties like the center-right union of Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union and the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), were shedding voters to the AfD, and in response partially adapted their platforms toward populist sentiment.
AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks
Leading members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.
Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture alliance
Björn Höcke
The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.
Image: picture-alliance/Arifoto Ug/Candy Welz
Alice Weidel
One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."
Image: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/picture-alliance
Maximilian Krah
Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
Image: Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images
Alexander Gauland
Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."
Christian Lüth
Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."
Image: Soeren Stache/dpa/picture-alliance
Beatrix von Storch
Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat
Harald Weyel
Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."
Image: Christoph Hardt /Future Image/imago images
Andre Poggenburg
Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/J. Wolf
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According to the study, the slide of Germany's traditional political parties into populist voter segments has been stopped.
"The temptation of the CDU/CSU and the FDP to follow the populism of the AfD, to imitate it or at least rhetorically adapt to it, is losing its electoral appeal," said co-author Wolfgang Merkel from the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), which also participated in the study.
The shift of centrists away from populism also means that the AfD is increasingly developing into a party dominated by right-wing extremist voters, according to the study.
"The party landscape in Germany is showing itself to be significantly more resistant to populism in the year before the 2021 federal elections than it was before and after the 2017 elections," said Vehrkamp.
