Changes at the Ballot Box – An Analysis of the Party Preferences of Immigrants (June 2018 – September 2018)

In a democratic system, going to the ballot box is not the only form of political participation, but it is certainly the most important. While many scientific studies have in the past looked at the party preferences of the population as a whole, the voting tendencies of migrants have not been sufficiently researched to date. More than 19 million people with a migration background live in Germany. At the 2017 elections to the Bundestag the proportion of people with a migration background who were eligible to vote rose to 10.2 per cent – from 9.4 per cent back in 2013. Voters with a migration background are of major significance for democracy in Germany and will in future have an ever greater role to play in shaping the countryʼs political landscape.

The project aimed to analyse the basic party orientations of people with a migration background based on the SVR’s Integration Barometer and to examine these with a view to future demographically driven shifts within the voter structure.

The first analysis drawing on data in the SVRʼs 2016 Integration Barometer was published in November 2016. Publication was supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration as part of the Year of Participation. A second analysis based on data from the SVRʼs 2018 Integration Barometer, in which a comparison could to be drawn between the two surveys, was published in September 2018 (only available in German).

Publications

Summary

Black, Red, Green. What are the Party Preferences of Immigrants?