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Where did AfD voters come from, and where did they go?
(www.tagesschau.de)
Even more voter movement charts.
Bonus: "Do you think Germany's economic situation is good or bad?"
not even asking about personal economic conditions, just the overall state there's a massive fucking difference in perception.
Might have a lot to do with the relative state of infrastructure and, generally, their surroundings.
That is, you might be personally fine off economically, but you're seeing abandoned buildings all over the place, the trams are run down, and the schools have leaky roofs because the municipality has no money because half of the population moved west and all the infrastructure is oversized.
Meanwhile, the stereotypical Green voter is living in a city driving their Cayenne to the horse pasture enjoying the quaint surroundings. (I mean of course you need an SUV you're towing the horse once every two years)
Same thing in the West. Infrastructure is not that far behind in the East actually, so this is a bit of a myth. Generally German infrastructure has been suffering a lot over the past couple decades, also thanks to the 16 years of the Union not wanting to spend money on anything important. But I guess voters forgot that already.
Actually that's way too short sighted, Austerity became German state religion much longer ago. Neoliberal sell-out and wholesale neglect of public property and infrastructure started under Helmut Kohl, and was seamlessly continued under Schröder to be equally seamlessly continued under Merkel and Scholz just went on with it, too. There is no large political party in Germany that is innocent of this crime.
Now that they have collectively sold out and run down the country and are doing little to nothing to remedy their past ~~mistakes~~ crimes, they are acting surprised that this is driving people into the arms of Nazi demagogues.
It's still deplorable to vote for the Nazi scum that is the AfD, but propaganda is a powerful tool and the Nazis are deliberately targeting those who have been shat on by the political establishment for decades by now. That their propaganda is a bunch of lies and they are only going to sell out the country and its people some more doesn't matter. People are stupid and easy to convince with propaganda. Keep in mind how the education system is a part of the public infrastructure that has been continuously and systematically neglected and sold out for almost half a century by now.
Over here in SH urbanisation is actually reversing a bit. Only a bit, but on average villages aren't dealing with a draining population any more. Lots of really small places that have issues, but OTOH the people there drive regularly to some village populous enough to have a supermarket and see that it's quite stable. Just don't ever visit Neumünster.
And I also think that plays into the "great replacement" perception: There's a difference when a place of say 20k gets 100 refugees and that's it vs. getting 100 refugees and 1000 leaving to work elsewhere. Still nowhere close to rightoid conspiracy narratives, of course, but the incline of the curve looks quite different, it's much easier to spin a narrative out of such a situation.
For east Germany it also does not help that within an hours drive you cross an arbitrary meaningless line but on the other side of it people will work for cents on the euro. So companies will not go where the higher wages are to be paid.
This also does not help the us and them rhetoric.
And yes, the left seems so hyperfocussed on migrants and citizens with a migrant background in their rhetoric that they alienate a lot of people that feel like they are not represented by that left. And this translates to.. so they are spending all the money on the brown people and nothing is left for us... While in reality everyone is fucked... Except a very small group.
That's one of the problems of the Greens, they and their voters are largely a relatively wealthy urban bubble who see three trees and think that's nature. That's why a lot of their environmental policy is based on greenwashing shit like CO~2~ certificate trading and subsidies to new electric cars only rich people can afford in the first place.
CO~2~ certificates don't attempt to greenwash, but to artificially give pollution a price. That way companies have a financial incentive to lower their CO~2~ pollution. And at the end of the day money is all companies care about.
The whole system is a joke if there's too many certificates around, though, for whatever reason.