The data in this atlas is assembled so that a particular explanation can be tested. It is not meant to prove it. The explanation runs:
The divergent voting behaviour in the East, above all the strength of the AfD, is not primarily cultural. It is the lingering consequence of an economic rupture: the Treuhand shock → deindustrialisation → the persistent under-representation of East Germans among elites and in wealth → the sense that nothing changes structurally, no matter who governs → a loss of trust in the media and the established parties.
This is an offered explanation. Whether the chain holds is decided by the data and by the points below where it could break.
The strongest counter-arguments are deliberately placed first. A thesis is only worth as much as it can be disproved.
- 1
The time lag
The Treuhand shock came in the early 1990s; the AfD's strength emerges from around 2015. A chain spanning more than twenty years has to explain why the effect arrives so late. Otherwise its closeness in time to the refugee crisis and the Merkel era is the simpler explanation.
- 2
Prosperous eastern districts vote AfD too
If it were purely economic disadvantage, prosperous eastern districts ought to diverge. Often they do not. That argues against a purely economic reading.
- 3
The western counter-test
West German districts with a similar structural rupture (the Ruhr, the Saarland) show no comparable AfD figures. If structure alone were the driver, they should.
- 4
Ecological fallacy
Trust in media and elite representation are available only nationally, not per district. Inferring from the federal level down to individual districts is methodologically shaky.
- 5
Selected dimensions
The ten dimensions were chosen to fit the thesis. Competing explanations (GDR-era socialisation, demographics and out-migration, migration patterns) are deliberately kept off centre stage. That is a choice, not neutrality.
How the data is collected and prepared is set out under About & Methodology, including the limits of the data. You can test the thesis directly on the map.