AfD’s electoral gains are about status, not just money

The AfD’s rise cannot be explained by household income alone, Bettina Kohlrausch argues. The more important question, in her view, is what people stand to lose in social status and participation.

Kohlrausch, director of the Hans Böckler Foundation’s Economic and Social Research Institute and a professor at Paderborn University, says economic conditions play an important role in the success of the AfD and other right-wing authoritarian parties across Europe. But she says the relevant economic experience extends beyond money in the bank.

Industrial upheaval and threatened job losses can undermine financial security while also devaluing skills and knowledge built over a working life. Her research links AfD support to fears of transformation and the loss of recognition, autonomy and dignity.

Workers directly affected by changes such as the phaseout of combustion engines may not reject the need for those changes, she writes. They can nevertheless experience them as decisions imposed from above, in which their expertise no longer counts and their willingness to shape events is not wanted. Social transfers may cushion the financial impact, but they do not remove that experience of humiliation.

The argument challenges Martin Schröder’s claim that the AfD mainly draws support from opposition to immigration rather than economic insecurity or fear of it. Kohlrausch points to the party’s doubled support after Friedrich Merz adopted a more migration-critical position for the CDU, despite promising that such a move would reduce AfD backing. She concludes that established parties need to conduct distributional debates differently if they want to win voters back.