Elections in Europe have always been influenced by the religious affiliation of voters: while Catholics often preferred conservative parties, Protestants tended to vote for Social Democrats. But does this also apply to the growing number of eligible voters who do not belong to a Christian church and instead represent, in all their diversity, the third-largest religious community in Germany, Islam? In Germany, there are no official statistics on how many people with German citizenship are of the Muslim faith, nor how many of them have ever exercised their right to vote.
The representative electoral statistics, which are still compiled in most countries, shed little light on this. Sociodemographic characteristics other than age and gender are not recorded. More theoretically valuable are the immense datasets generated by so-called post-election surveys, which have been conducted for decades on behalf of public broadcasters. In the fall of 2018, German pollsters added “Muslim” as a third option in the religion section of their questionnaires. “We wanted to cover the response options as comprehensively as possible,” said a leading election researcher. However, analyzing the data proved difficult. Although an estimated 45% of the roughly five to six million Muslims in Germany are thought to have German citizenship, only a small proportion have participated in elections so far. In fact, the number of those who identified as Muslim after casting their vote has, in recent years, been too small to allow for their voting behavior to be separately identified.
The repeat election in Berlin on February 23, 2023, was the first instance where this was possible – even though the proportion of non-religious people in the capital is significantly higher than in the rest of the country. In the western part of the city, 55% do not belong to any major religious community, and in the east, the figure is 80%. Overall, the proportion of non-religious people in Germany is estimated at 38%, but in Berlin, the figure stood at 59%. Only about a quarter of the 17,478 representatively surveyed voters identified themselves as members of the Protestant church, 8% were Catholic, and 3% (just over 500) were Muslim.
Even when extrapolated to the total number of Muslims, this cohort remains small, even when compared to the total number of voters. Of the 1.5 million people who voted on February 23, only 45,000 Muslim citizens are estimated to have exercised their right to vote. However, it is impossible to determine how many Muslims were eligible to vote, significantly limiting the significance of this number. Nevertheless, it is likely that the voter turnout in this group was much lower than the overall turnout – and this, despite the fact that only two-thirds (62.9%) of eligible voters participated in the election of the new House of Representatives in 2023.
More surprising than the low voter turnout of Muslims was the distribution of votes. The far-right AfD performed the worst among Muslim voters with religious affiliations. Overall, the AfD received 9.1% of the second votes. Slightly below average support came from Protestant voters, with 7% of them voting for the party, which is partially classified as extremist. Among Catholics, the figure was 5%, and among Muslims, only 4%. It would indeed be surprising if Muslims were drawn to a party that treats members of this religious community with disdain, if not hatred.
Conservative thinking is more familiar to Muslims, such as the emphasis on family and religion. This may explain why the CDU garnered more than a quarter of Muslim votes in February 2023 – a result that surprised many the day after the election. The voting behavior of Muslims aligned exactly with the overall CDU result of 28%. However, it is impossible to determine how the Union’s result among Muslims compares to the September 2021 election, as the “religion” category was not recorded in surveys due to the simultaneous federal election.
The distribution of Muslim votes among the other parties is also not comparable to previous results. Nevertheless, the Berlin pattern fits well with what is known from older surveys not directly related to elections. Most politically active Muslims not only traditionally position themselves to the left of the center but also currently: 25% voted for the SPD (overall share of 18.4%) and 15% for the Left Party (overall share of 12.2%). This would amount to a combined 40%. If one adds the Greens with 8%, a red-red-green Muslim majority would be secure. However, the truth also includes the fact that the Greens received over 18% of the overall vote, meaning that support for the party, which governs federally, was not particularly strong among Berlin Muslims. This imbalance was not seen with the FDP, whose vote share among Muslims was just under 5%, the same as in the overall electorate.
But how is it that the Greens and AfD performed their worst, while the SPD and Left Party achieved their best results among religiously affiliated voters? “The small sample sizes do not allow for differentiation by further sociodemographic parameters,” says an expert. The distribution pattern seems familiar. The SPD and, more recently, the Left Party have long felt responsible for the interests of groups that immigrated to Germany as “guest workers,” particularly Turks. As a result, the proportion of migrants with Turkish backgrounds involved in politics with an SPD, Left Party, or even Green Party membership at the municipal and state levels remains significant.
However, the left-leaning tendency of politically active Muslims should not be seen as a given. The result of the European elections in June tells a different story than the Berlin election of February 2023 or the 2019 European Parliament election. According to recent data, the SPD and Greens predictably performed best among Muslim voters in West Germany, while the sample size in East Germany was too small to draw conclusions. This was also the case on June 9, so the following information only pertains to the old Federal Republic, including West Berlin. In the West, both governing parties, along with the Left Party, experienced a rude awakening. While in 2019 the numbers added up for a red-green-red majority, by 2023, only 13% of Muslims voted for the SPD, down from 32%. The Greens dropped from 21% to 7%, and the Left Party settled for 8%, down from 13%.
Apart from the CDU, which increased its share from 10% to 15%, the real winners were the newly formed parties that didn’t exist in 2019: the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and the newly established DAVA (Democratic Alliance for Diversity and Progress), which exclusively targets the German-Turkish electorate. Both parties garnered 17% of the vote. The AfD and FDP remained insignificant with just 3% each.
For election researchers, the collapse of the SPD, Greens, and Left Party reflects the political mood in Western Germany. The high expectations placed on the “Progress Coalition,” which has governed in Berlin since 2021, have given way to deep disappointment. For Muslim voters, two new parties seemed to offer a full-fledged alternative: the BSW as a projection of leftist expectations, and DAVA, with its ethnonationalist rhetoric, as the defender of the Turkish minority, which feels insufficiently appreciated by the host society. Overall, however, the voting behavior of Muslims differs less sharply, or only in certain respects, from that of the general population than is often assumed. More frequently than in the majority society, party loyalty is weak in this subgroup. This leads to a high degree of volatility in voting behavior, especially in “secondary” elections like the European elections, where not much seems at stake, and the perceived weight of one’s vote is even smaller.
This is especially true for DAVA’s weak performance in the spring, despite significant media attention. While it is common in majority society to label immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries simply as Muslims and define them by their assumed religious affiliation, the religious and political pluralism among migrants is no less pronounced than in the host society. Therefore, the mobilization potential of “Islam-specific parties” is limited to a small core of eligible voters, mostly with a Turkish background.
It fits this pattern that many migrants have “never really felt represented” by traditional parties and instead have organized themselves in “communities offering a sense of belonging.” The SPD is no longer the exception. Figures like Thilo Sarrazin have alienated many migrants. However, if Muslim voters, like others, base their voting decisions on socioeconomic considerations and cultural preferences, then neither the relatively good performance of the CDU in Berlin and the European elections (15%, up five points) nor the strong showing of the BSW is a mystery. The CDU has opened itself up to migrants in recent years. The BSW, on the other hand, which performed better among Muslims in West Germany than any traditional party, including the AfD, has benefited from a phenomenon typical of immigrant countries: “The last to arrive are the first to oppose more immigration,” as a classic paradox goes. It is, therefore, plausible that Muslim voters could find more appeal in the BSW’s anti-multicultural agenda than in the Green Party’s welcoming culture or a disappointing SPD.
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