Long-term occupational upgrading and party support in German districts

Vollständiger Abstract

Worum geht es in dieser Arbeit?

Abstract While the structural transformation of Western economies has deepened spatial inequality and polarised voting behaviour, we lack a nuanced understanding of how the resulting regional occupational change maps onto electoral outcomes. Focusing on Germany, this article examines how three decades of occupational upgrading relate to party vote choice in the 2017 and 2021 federal elections. Combining administrative employment data with fine-grained district-level voting results and geo-coded individual survey data, we provide both aggregate and individual-level evidence on how party support varies across regions experiencing different levels of occupational upgrading. The social democratic SPD emerges across both analytical approaches as the party most consistently associated with regions experiencing weaker upgrading, while the Greens and the liberal FDP find their strongholds in strongly upgrading regions. The radical right AfD shows the expected concentration in lower-upgrading districts at the aggregate level, but this association disappears once we account for individual composition. Contrary to common theoretical expectations, the Left party draws stronger support in upgrading rather than in left-behind regions. Together, these findings demonstrate that the political effects of regional occupational transformation reach well beyond the radical right and reshape party support across the German political spectrum.