2023-07-18 10:16:37
When the AfD recently won two local elections in a row, Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) warned that Germany was “on the way to a polarization that we know from America”. Energy transition, heating law, refugee policy and sanctions against Russia – these issues threatened to tear society apart. Kretschmer alluded to the fact that in the United States, Republicans and Democrats and their respective supporters are becoming increasingly irreconcilable on political and social issues. Researchers call this “affective polarization”: People encounter each other with emotional rejection when it comes to important socio-political issues.
But is this phenomenon actually increasing in Germany? A study by the Mercator Forum for Migration and Democracy at the Technical University of Dresden investigated this question. The researchers not only examined German society, but also nine other European countries.
In autumn 2022, in cooperation with the opinion research institute YouGov, they surveyed around 20,000 people from Germany, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Spain, the Czech Republic and Hungary about their own political stance and their perception of their political counterparts. Respondents were asked to rate themselves on a scale of 0 to 10 on a range of socio-political issues, and then how they rate people at the other end of the spectrum. The respondents then had to answer how high they assessed the divisive potential of the respective topic.
What issues divide people: Image: FAZ
The researchers found that voters of left and green parties tend to reject people with different views more than people who position themselves more on the right of the political spectrum, especially on issues such as climate change and dealing with pandemics. Only in Germany are supporters of the AfD just ahead of Green voters when it comes to the degree of polarization. However, the differences are not statistically significant – left and right are about the same. The study saw the least rejection of people with other positions among FDP voters, followed by Christian Democrats and non-voters.
Right-wing voters, on the other hand, were the most unforgiving towards those with different attitudes when it came to immigration. In a Europe-wide comparison, the rejection among German AfD voters is more pronounced than among voters of right-wing parties in other countries, especially among the eastern German respondents.
When asked about the issues to which those surveyed attributed the greatest potential for division, many named not only the issue of climate change, but also social benefits and their financing. The results show that social benefits are only slightly polarizing, i.e. they do not cause a particularly strong rejection of people with a different attitude.
In Germany, the East-West difference is significant
According to the study, the East-West difference plays a particularly important role in Germany. While in West Germany, for example, support for Ukraine is not classified as particularly polarizing, the topic is in second place in East Germans. When it comes to the question of migration, East Germans reject people with different attitudes much more than West Germans.
Other factors do not have such a clear impact on the results in this country. A statistical effect could only be found for age: people over 55 in Germany are usually more polarized than young people. Across Europe, the researchers also found greater polarization among people with higher incomes, higher educational qualifications, and among city dwellers.
In a European comparison, according to the study, Germany is not ahead in terms of affective polarization, but Italy, followed by Greece. Germany is in the middle: around 21 percent of the German respondents classified the researchers as “strongly polarized”, i.e. they rated people with the opposite attitude as particularly negative and people with a similar attitude to their own as particularly positive. Affective polarization is least pronounced in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and France.
A comment by Konrad Schuller Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 65 Renate Köcher, Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 46 Nina Bub Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 1
The researchers are still at odds as to where exactly this phenomenon originated. As possible reasons, they list media discourses, political confrontations or simply a very convinced political conviction. They emphasize that social discourses are to be welcomed in principle. However, it becomes dangerous when political opinion becomes part of identity, as is the case with the phenomenon of affective polarization.
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