German teenagers and young adults find themselves increasingly unsatisfied and likely to vote for the far right, according to a survey. Fears about prosperity are highlighted as a possible cause.
Young people are more likely to vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) than previously, a study on Tuesday showed.
Authors of the “Youth in Germany 2024” study said that under-30s were increasingly disgruntled with their social and economic situation, and that fears about future prosperity were driving a shift to the right.
The AfD’s signature issue is a hard-line anti-immigration stance, and the data showed that migration was among young people’s main concerns.
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The online study, conducted in January and February, found that young people were becoming increasingly dissatisfied, especially with their social and economic situation, compared with previous years.
After the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors said economic and political worries for example due to inflation, high rents, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East or the division of society had taken center stage.
I compared these numbers to the general population (Source: https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/ )
Support for the far right AfD is about 5 percentage points lower than among the general population (12% vs 17%)
For the conservative CDU/CSU it is 10 pp lower (20% vs 30%)
For the Social Democrats it is 3 pp lower (12% vs 15%)
For the liberal FDP it is 4 pp higher (8% vs 4%)
For the Greens it is about 4 pp higher (18% vs 14%)
For the Wagenknecht alliance, a weird mix of far right and far left, it is about the same (5%)
Unfortunately this article doesn’t mention the socialist left, which for the general population sits at around 3%
So, to conclude (and from my own experience) youths in Germany don’t deviate that much from the general population in terms of their political views. They tend to be less conservative and xenophobic. Most of them are somewhere in the center, having slightly more liberal tendencies than the general population.