In yesterday’s German election, the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) outperformed among the young and underperformed among the old. Can Britain learn any lessons from this?
Whereas those over 70 emphatically rejected the far right, AfD scooped 21 per cent of the vote among 18- to 24-year-old voters – about as much as their national share, if not a touch higher.
The Social Democrats (SPD) and Christian Democrats (CDU), meanwhile, could only amass 25 per cent in aggregate. Meanwhile, the Left Party (Die Linke, a descendant of the former East German socialist party) tops out among the young with 25 per cent of the vote. Young voters are polarised, and only a quarter of them will be duly represented in the grand coalition to come. It’s easy to imagine long-term consequences there. But more interesting for Britain, I think, is who turned up.
Voters turned out in record numbers – this was the highest voter engagement since before reunification. Some of this must be attributed to the relative popularity of the AfD.
I’ve been running Britain Elects since 2013. And the period since in politics has taught me some things. For example, the success of Ukip (and the success of other right-wing European parties) correlated with low-turnout contests. When voters showed up – as was the case with the BNP in Barking in 2010, or the re-run of the Austrian presidential election in 2016 – the hard right would be humbled.
But we can no longer rely on the assumption that the far right has only a limited pocket of enthusiasts to count on. According to Infratest dimap data, almost half of those who did not vote in the last German election came out for the AfD in this one. While the Left party turned out 300,000 new voters, the far right turned out 1.8 million. And the CDU turned out 900,000 new supporters. The SPD, ever in a state of churn, gained an additional 250,000 new voters while shedding support everywhere else.
My analysis of UK polls back in January found a similar (though hypothetical) phenomenon with Reform UK. Much of its poll rise – it’s now 1 point ahead of Labour in the opinion polls – has come from non-voters saying they want to be Reform voters. But there is an important health warning: tracking voter enthusiasm from the historically apathetic is trickier than tracking enthusiasm from the historically enthusiastic.
Nevertheless, to see a high-turnout, government-shifting election in which the far right does well among the historically apathetic in Germany is shocking. It solidifies something we suspect about Britain: that the rise of the hard-right Reform is real rather than abstract.
Where is this all coming from? The AfD’s success in east Germany came in part as a consequence of turning out new people in traditionally low-turnout areas. And, once you exclude Berlin, the biggest jump in turnout by constituency came in the same place as the biggest advance for the AfD.
Berlin is interesting: it shows the left is as capable of garnering support in its traditional territory as the AfD.
The real lesson from this German election? Assumptions that low-turnout areas will stay low is a risky strategy. Germany shows us the far right can rally new voters among the traditionally unbothered.
Reform’s future wins, if the polls stay as they are, may come in the most apathetic areas of England and Wales – and who knows, maybe even Scotland. The old rules are dying, if not dead. Non-voters are becoming new voters; Britain’s party machines need to account for this, lest they find themselves washed away like Olaf Scholz and his SPD.
[See more: Can Labour rally in Scotland?]
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