Attitudes Driving Support for PEGIDA – a 2015–16 Two-Wave Panel Study
No.1(2017)
Abstract
Keywords:
populism; right-wing populism; Germany; PEGIDA; group-focused enmity; political disenchantment; media criticism; right-wing attitudes; web survey; panel study; binary-logistic regression analysis
At the end of 2014, a right-wing populist movement named PEGIDA emerged in Germany, starting in Dresden. Whereas branches of this movement disappeared within a few months all across the country, the movement in Dresden persists. This article seeks to uncover the attitudes behind this movement. Derived from literature regarding the voting of right-wing populist parties in Europe we built an analytic model considering group-focused enmity, political disenchantment, distrust in media, right-wing attitudes, fears of extremism, foreign domination as well as of economic decline, as conceivable predictors of support for PEGIDA. With a time lag of twelve months, we conducted a two-wave web survey with inhabitants of Dresden within a representative, recruited, online panel. Our results show that the most important factors driving the support for PEGIDA are hostility against foreigners, fears of foreign domination, distrust in the media and right-wing attitudes. However, political disenchantment and fears of economic decline do not play a role in explaining the support for PEGIDA.
populism; right-wing populism; Germany; PEGIDA; group-focused enmity; political disenchantment; media criticism; right-wing attitudes; web survey; panel study; binary-logistic regression analysis
