Dissatisfaction and Concerns about the Future: The Political Climate Ahead of the 2024 State Elections in Eastern Germany
How do people in Germany perceive the current state of politics and society? What are the most pressing concern, and which issues are most important to them at the moment? And, are there any major differences in attitudes between respondents in the western and eastern German states?
Ahead of the 2024 EU parliamentary elections, our team at d|part conducted a comprehensive study among citizens of eight EU member states and analysed commonalities in political attitudes, material burdens, concerns and hopes . Given the upcoming German state elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, we extended our sample size in the eastern German states to enable additional and more focused analyses of the region.
While we anticipated that higher approval ratings for the AfD in eastern Germany might reflect greater dissatisfaction and fears of decline, our findings reveal a more nuanced picture. The differences between eastern and western Germany are less pronounced than expected and vary in complexity. Instead, our research indicates that frustration and dissatisfaction with current policies are widespread across the entire country, but differ more significantly between rural and urban areas.