An official study after the German elections showed that the country’s Muslim community (accounting for 6.6% of the German population) overwhelmingly supports left-wing parties, especially the far-left Die Linke and the social democratic SPD, primarily due to their immigration policies and pro-Palestine stance.
Left-wing parties would have bagged nearly 70% of the vote if only Muslims had participated in last week’s federal election, which projects a rather grim future for right-wing politics in Germany, unless current trends in immigration and demographics are reversed.
According to the study done by the research group Wahlen for the state-owned media ZDF, the most pro-Palestinian Die Linke was backed by 29% of Muslims with German citizenship, over three times more than their nationwide result (8.8%). The socialist SPD is close second with 28% among Muslims, despite suffering the greatest election defeat in their history with only 16.4% nationally.
In turn, the center-right CDU received only 12%, while the national conservative AfD got 6%, or way less than half of their actual results combined, and both would have been locked out of governance if only Muslims had voted.
On the other hand, the Greens did abysmally with only 4% among Muslims—showing that climate is simply a non-issue in the community—while the left-wing populist BSW, even though it’s also anti-immigration, would have entered the Bundestag with over 6%.
Although not all foreigners in Germany are Muslim, this data is still the closest we can get at the moment to map political trends among immigrants. The future implications could spell disaster for right-wing politics as the Muslim voter base is expected to grow much more quickly than other groups.
The reason for this is three-fold. One is continued mass labor migration which the incoming CDU-SPD coalition is unlikely to ease on. The second is the much higher birth rate in the community (1.9 children per woman) compared to the non-Muslims (1.4 children). Lastly, only about half of Germany’s Muslim population has citizenship and is allowed to vote at the moment, but many of the remaining three million will also become gradually naturalized, further increasing as one of the Left’s most loyal voter bases.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the left-wing parties are much more conscious of this effect. Shortly before the elections, socialist former state secretary Sawsan Chebli posted about German demographic trends and said the growing Muslim population was one of SPD’s main “strengths.” The second-generation Palestinian immigrant politician asked her fellow Muslims considering leaving the country to stay and vote instead, because in time, “demographics will create facts.”
Well, one of these facts is that the pro-Palestine (or, rather anti-Israel) cause has been one of the biggest mobilizing factors among Muslims in this election. That’s the reason the loudest Israel critic Die Linke did so well among the community and part of the reason the party won six constituencies outright—including one in West Berlin for the first time in its history.
