Breakthrough: The Refugee Crisis, Anti-Immigrant Sentiment, and the Success of the AfD in the 2017 Federal Election

The AfD’s shift to a more strident anti-immigrant, extremist, and populist politics was unmistakable in the run up to the federal election of 2017. So how did the party fare with voters after this transformation? What were the issues driving the AfD vote in the 2017 federal election? Who voted for the party and why? It is those questions we explore empirically in this chapter. Our major argument here is that in the 2017 federal election the AfD further refined a strategy of issue entrepreneurship. In short, the party was able to achieve its electoral breakthrough by pivoting from criticism of the Merkel government’s response to the European sovereign debt crisis and financial assistance to Greece to a full-frontal attack on the political establishment’s migrant/refugee policy.