I has often been claimed in recent literature that class voting is in decline and issues related to economic inequality give way to cultural issues, related to divisions over authoritarian and libertarian values, and that education as the structural basis of these conflicts as a new social cleavage in voting behaviour (e.g. Stubager 2010, 2013). Yet it also been argued that education is just one aspect of class beside income, which continues to be related to the traditional economic left-right dimension (e.g. van der Waal et al. 2007).

(West) Germany is a case that is unique in allowing to test the validity of these notions, in so far as both the economic left-right dimension and dimension related to cultural issues find sufficiently strong expression in the party system and as a relatively long time series of election study data is available. We make use of this opportunity and by analysing a long-term compilation of German electoral studies from 1949 to 2021 and by examining the long-term dynamics “socio-economic” and “educational voting”. With additional focus on the most recent elections of 2013 through 2021 we examine the contribution of income and education to recent changes in voting behaviour, in particular, the rise of the right-wing “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) and the left-libertarian Green party.