The long-term relation between turnout and electoral support for social democracts in Germany

At the 5th Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association I had the opportunity to present a paper entitled “The Crisis of Social Democracy and the Political Demobilisation of the Working Class in Germany”. In this paper I analyse the dual decline of turnout in Germany and of the support for the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). I show that both changes are linked and concentrated in a core group of SPD supporters, the manual working class.

/news/research/2015-06-27-paper-crisis-democracy/OccupClass-Nonvot-West-Colour.png

SPD intention and intention to abstain from federal election, broken down by class, ALLBUS 1980–2014