In recent years, Germany experienced a considerable increase in populist radical right (PRR) voting. However, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) election results vary considerably between different German regions. Apart from the East/West German special case, the common explanations for the geographical clustering of the populist radical right (PRR) vote are mostly regional deprivation and/or the rural-urban divide. Germany represents an interesting case in this respect, since neither are deprived regions necessarily rural regions (as it is the case in many other countries) nor are all AfD strongholds in deprived regions – it is rather the other way round: the AfD does well in comparatively wealthy regions such as for instance Southern Germany or Saxony. But why do AfD election results vary so much by region? While scholars already have an idea about macro- and micro-level factors for PRR voting, the mechanisms linking both together are widely unknown. Two possible mechanisms are especially focused upon: regional inequality and changes of the local conditions over time. The paper therefore aims to explain the link between local context and individual vote choice for the AfD.

It combines individual-level data and contextual-level data on neighbourhood- and county-level to account for the uncertainty about the (ir-)relevance of different geographical levels. Multi-level regression models containing cross-level interactions are conducted to answer the research question. By using unique geo-referenced small-scale data, the paper seeks to fill the research gap regarding mechanisms that link contextual effects to the individual level to better understand regional patterns in AfD voting.