Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/308282 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Citation: 
[Journal:] Politische Vierteljahresschrift [ISSN:] 1862-2860 [Volume:] 65 [Issue:] 1 [Publisher:] Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH [Place:] Wiesbaden [Year:] 2023 [Pages:] 99-122
Publisher: 
Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, Wiesbaden
Abstract: 
The Free Voters ( Freie Wähler ) party is becoming a more serious competitor in the German party system. It gained parliamentary representation in the Rhineland Palatine in 2021 and has been governing with the Christian Social Union in Bavaria since 2018. In addition, the Free Voters party now holds two of the 96 German parliamentary member positions in the European Parliament and is, at the federal level, the extraparliamentary opposition party with the greatest number of votes. Nevertheless, there has, to date, been no analysis examining people's motives for voting for the Free Voters or exploring their future openness to voting for the party. This article addresses this oversight by identifying factors, based on population-representative data from the 2021 Bundestag elections, that favour openness and voting for this increasingly influential party. Our analysis shows that a more general dissatisfaction with democratic outputs, a conservative attitude, and low perceptions of spatial distance from the political positions of the Free Voters have significant positive effects.
Subjects: 
Free Voters
German politics
Party competition
German federal election 2021
Voter potentials
Freie Wähler
Deutsche Politik
Parteienwettbewerb
Bundestagswahl 2021
Wählerpotenziale
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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