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State election in Saxony-Anhalt: voting in a polling station in the Harz Mountains
Photo: Matthias Bein / dpa
For the CDU it was one of the most successful election evenings in the recent past: Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff's party not only did significantly better in the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt than in the polls of the past few weeks.
It also clearly won compared to the 2016 state elections.
Haseloff spoke of a "demarcation to the right" that the citizens had made in view of the huge lead over the AfD.
(You can read our lightning analysis here, a report from Magdeburg can be found here.)
Which voter hikes led to this result?
The overview
The
Christian Democrats
took votes from all parties except the FDP.
This emerges from an analysis of the preliminary voter migration by Infratest dimap for the ARD.
Most of them - 15,000 - they got from the Social Democrats.
There are also 13,000 former left voters, 11,000 AfD and 1,000 ex-Green voters.
There was no statistically significant voter migration between the CDU and FDP.
Particularly important for the Union's election success: it was able to win over 35,000 former non-voters.
In
addition to the CDU, the
AfD
lost primarily to the FDP: 4,000 former right-wing populist voters this time voted for the liberals.
The AfD also cast votes to the SPD (2000).
There were only gains for the AfD from former voters of the left (3000).
In addition, 6,000 previous non-voters voted for the AfD.
The
left
was again the third strongest force in the state parliament, but it deteriorated by a good five percentage points compared to 2016. In addition to the 13,000 votes that the party lost to the CDU, the main reason for this was 11,000 former voters who did not vote this time. The left also lost to all other parties: 7,000 votes to the Greens, 4,000 to the FDP, 3,000 each to the SPD and AfD and 4,000 to small parties.
The
SPD
suffered one of the worst results in its party history.
The Social Democrats only took votes from the Left (3000) and the AfD (2000).
Incidentally, they lost to all other parties: 15,000 voters to the Union, 2,000 to the Greens, 1,000 each to the FDP and small parties.
In addition, 7,000 former Social Democratic voters did not vote in this election.
The
FDP, which
will be represented in the Magdeburg state parliament again after ten years, was able to convince former voters of the AfD and the left - here the liberals each gained 4,000 votes.
In addition, 2000 former non-voters voted for the FDP.
The
Greens
gained votes from the left: They took votes from the Left (7,000) and the SPD (2,000).
At the same time, however, the Greens lost to the CDU and the small parties (2000).
In addition, 2000 former party's voters did not cast their votes.
Union scores with women, AfD with boys
It is noteworthy that the CDU was more popular with women voters (41 percent) than with voters (33 percent).
The opposite picture emerges with the AfD.
Its electorate was predominantly male - the party's share of the vote was 27 percent for men and 16 percent for women.
The other parties, on the other hand, showed no significant differences between voting behavior by
gender
.
The analysis by
age group
shows that the AfD scored particularly well in the group of younger voters.
Among the 18- to 24-year-olds, the AfD was almost on par with the CDU, as was the 35- to 44-year-olds.
In the group of 25 to 34 year olds, the AfD was even significantly better than the Christian Democrats and clearly the strongest party.
The proportion of votes in the CDU grew with the age of the electoral groups.
Accordingly, the Christian Democrats achieved their best results with people aged 60 and over: The proportion of votes in the group of 60 to 69 year olds was 43 percent;
in the case of voters 70 and over, even 49 percent.
The CDU took both among voters with easier (41 percent) and among those with high
education
(34 percent) had the highest share of the vote.
With the AfD, the difference was bigger.
Their share of the vote was twice as high among people with a simple education (26 percent) than among those with a higher education.
With the Greens and the FDP it is the other way round: They do significantly better among people with a high level of education than among those with a simple level of education.
