(In-)Consistent voting in the 2009, 2013 and 2017 German federal elections

Abstract

Choosing the “right” party has been especially challening for German voters due to considerable changes in the German political landscape, with the AfD’s rise in 2013 being just the tip of the iceberg. The chapter aims to answer the question of how these changes have influenced attitude-consistent voting in Germany and specifically whether the reasons for (in-)consistent voting have changed between the German federal elections of 2009, 2013, and 2017. Using GLES cross-sectional survey data and online tracking surveys, the chapter suggests that, regardless of the crises and the rise of a new political actor, most German voters voted (or would have voted) consistently between 2009 and 2017. In 2009 and 2017, inconsistent voting was strongly associated with low levels of political knowledge. By contrast, in 2013 inconsistent voters were primarily dissatisfied with democracy and the political elites and sympathetic to the AfD.

Publication
In: Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck, Sigrid Roßteutscher, Harald Schoen, Bernhard Weßels und Christof Wolf (Hg.): The Changing German Voter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 165–182