How German Muslims voted in the federal elections and why
Concerns about the economy and anti-immigrant discrimination brought Germany’s Muslim minority out in force for left and centre left parties
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Muslims in Germany showed overwhelming support for parties on the left and centre left in the recent federal elections and failed to deliver the sharp increase in support for the far-right that pollsters predicted.
An exit poll of 693 Muslim voters gathered by the research group Forschungsgruppe Wahlen and shared with Hyphen found the three most popular parties among Germany’s fastest growing minority were the Die Linke (The Left) at 29%, the centre-left SPD at 28%, and the new leftwing nationalist party BSW with 16%. The far-right AfD tripled its support among Muslim voters to 6% – far short of the 20% forecast in pre-election polling.
Achim Goerres, a professor of empirical political science at the University of Duisburg-Essen, said a large number of first-time voters likely had an impact on this result: “First-time voters overall were more likely to vote for The Left and BSW.”
According to the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), voter turnout among immigrant-origin voters is usually lower than the overall population. This year, however, 82% of voters with Middle East and North African (Mena) and Turkish heritage told DeZIM researchers they intended to vote — a figure more or less in line with the overall turnout of 82.5% (the highest figure since German reunification in 1990).
The Forschungsgruppe Wahlen data suggests that the centre-right CDU/CSU alliance —which won the chancellorship with 28.6% of the votes — received 12% of the Muslim vote and the Green Party just 4%. Research carried out by DeZIM also found that voters with Mena and Turkish heritage preferred the SPD, Die Linke and BSW.
Die Linke’s surprise resurgence on the national stage — the party re-entered the Bundestag after almost doubling its overall vote share to 8.8% — has puzzled analysts. According to Fabio Best, a researcher at DeZIM, one reason could be the unpopular decision by CDU leader Friedrich Merz shortly before the election to collaborate with the AfD in an attempt to push through strict immigration reforms, breaking the country’s post-war consensus that democratic parties should not work with the far right. “This was when Die Linke began increasing its vote share in polls,” he said.
Almost 50% of German Muslims, around 1.2 million voters, are of Turkish heritage. The Turkish community has a longstanding relationship with the SPD, built in the 1960s between trade unions and the migrant workers who came to fill a labour shortage. In the last federal elections in 2021, Turkish-German voters backed the SPD by 39%, Die Linke by 13%, the CDU by 16%, the Greens by 15% and the AfD by 2% (no data is available for Muslim voters overall or people with Mena heritage).
In recent years, however, German Muslim voters have become more diverse with new arrivals after 2015 from the Middle East, particularly refugees from Syria, and Afghanistan. In 2023, Syrians were the fastest growing group of naturalisations, with 75,500 obtaining German passports.
The only centre-left party to do badly with Muslim voters in this election was the Greens. According to Best, many were disillusioned with the party after it failed to push through significant climate protection as part of the country’s “traffic light coalition” government. There are also historic reasons for its lack of popularity amongst Muslims. “Traditionally, its voter base has been rather white and middle class,” Best said.
BSW, a party formed in January 2024 by Sahra Wagenknecht, formerly of Die Linke, on a pro-welfare but anti-immigration and pro-Russia platform, failed to meet the 5% of votes required for Bundestag entry. Muslim support for BSW was notably higher than the overall population at 16%. This may be a result of the party’s call for an arms embargo on Israel but Best cautions there is not sufficient data about German Muslim support for BSW throughout the Gaza war to draw this conclusion.
The three topics that voters with immigration backgrounds named as the most important to them — the economy, immigration and social justice — chimed broadly with the most pressing concerns of German voters nationwide. “Overall we don’t have much polarisation when it comes to the issues,” Best said. “Migrants and non-migrants, and left and right voters, all perceive the world quite similarly.”
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