Same Experience, Different Politics: Perceived Economic Trajectories and Voting Intentions Across Multidimensional Social Positions in Germany

This paper examines how perceptions of personal economic trajectories are associated with voting intentions in Germany from a multidimensional social structural perspective. The theoretical premise is that perceiving one’s economic situation as improving or worsening over recent years may translate into different political preferences depending on individuals’ combined vertical (i.e. economic) and horizontal (i.e. cultural) position in the social structure.
Several mechanisms could drive such heterogeneity. First, different groups may interpret identical economic changes through distinct causal lenses, attributing mobility to personal effort, systemic discrimination, or government policy. Second, voters compare their financial trajectories to relevant reference groups that vary by social position. A highly educated woman with migration background experiencing modest upward mobility may evaluate this against different expectations than a non-migrant man with similar economic experiences. Third, the salience of economic concerns relative to other political considerations (e.g. identity, values, group solidarity) likely varies across multidimensional social structural positions. Finally, political parties frame economic challenges differently: through class solidarity, nationalist protection, or meritocratic opportunity. These competing narratives resonate differently depending on voters’ location within the multidimensional social structure.
Using recent data from the RISS Internalization Survey, which includes a nationally representative sample and a Turkish oversample, we examine voting intentions across groups defined by simultaneous positioning along the key dimensions of gender, migration background, and education. We argue that this multidimensional approach captures qualitative differences in how economic experiences acquire political meaning, moving beyond models that treat group identities as operating independently and additively.
Preliminary analyses reveal distinct patterns: those experiencing upward financial mobility are more likely to support the Greens, while those experiencing downward mobility prefer the AfD or have no party preference. For the center-left SPD and center-right CDU/CSU, economic experiences matter less. Importantly, these relationships vary across multidimensionally defined social groups, revealing that the same financial experiences carry different political meanings depending on social position. For instance, downward mobility strongly predicts AfD support among low-educated men with no migration background but shows no such association among women with migration background.
The study contributes to understanding political fragmentation in contemporary Germany by revealing to what extent the political consequences of economic experiences operate as a heterogeneous process dependent on multidimensional social position. This has implications for how parties mobilize voters and challenges simplified narratives about economic winners and losers driving uniform political responses.