Germans under 25 gave the AfD 16% of their vote in the European elections, with particular support in the east

Germans under 25 gave the AfD 16% of their vote in the European elections, with particular support in the east

Paul Friedrich, 16, could not wait to cast his first ballot and had no doubt which German party had earned his support in the watershed European elections.

“Correct, I voted AfD,” he said proudly in the bustle of the commuter railway station in Brandenburg an der Havel, an hour from central Berlin.

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland made particularly stunning gains on Sunday among young voters. For the first time in a national poll, 16- and 17-year-olds could cast their ballots – a reform that had been strongly backed by left-leaning parties.

After overwhelmingly supporting the Greens five years ago, Germans under 25 gave the AfD 16% of their vote – an 11-point rise – helping place the party second behind the opposition CDU-CSU conservatives and well ahead of the Social Democrats of the chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

The AfD tapped deep wells of support in the former communist east, winning in every state including Brandenburg, where it claimed 27.5% of the vote.

…

And his concerns echo those of many teenagers and twentysomethings in town: fears of war spreading in Europe, inflation, economic decline, “unchecked” immigration and, above all, violent crime, which they say is rampant when they use public transport or hang out in public spaces at night.

  • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
    6·
    20 days ago

    It’s true, to an extent, but not because migrants bad. You can look at this, but the short of it is that the stats you see in the news are like that mostly because they’re counting illegal immigration and illegal stay as crimes in their stats, which as you can probably guess is pretty flawed. You remove that and the numbers look… still bad but a lot more realistic. Then you realize that migrants are more likely to be poor young men (aka the demographic most likely to commit crime). As the article explains, Syrians for example are actually underrepresented in crime stats, because they tend to be complete family units (most Syrians in Germany were allowed to bring their families over) so the demographics are more representative of a normal society.