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Abstract

The recent successes of populist radical right (PRR) parties have caused major upheavals across European political landscapes. Yet, the roots of their rising popularity continue to be widely debated. We contribute to these debates by advancing a thus far underexplored argument of rising rent burden as key to understanding contemporary PRR vote and nativist attitudes. Rising rents lie at the heart of growing concerns related to housing (un)affordability and (over)burden across Western democracies, directly affecting the economic and social well-being of substantial numbers of citizens. PRR parties, we argue, stand to gain from politicizing such concerns in distinct economic and nativist terms, especially amidst challenges like the European refugee crisis, which provoked an urgent need to house unprecedented inflows of refugees. Drawing on individual-level panel data from Germany, we uncover a strong relationship between rising rents, PRR vote, and hostile attitudes toward refugees. In calling attention to rising rents, our study adds important insights into scholarship on the politics of housing markets not only from the perspective of home ownership and housing assets, but also rents. In so doing, we also refine understandings of the conditions under which economic factors shape PRR support

Keywords

Populist radical right housing rent voting behavior refugee crisis panel data

Introduction

The recent successes of populist radical right (PRR) parties¹ have caused major upheavals across European political landscapes. Capitalizing on recent Europe-wide challenges like the Eurozone crisis and the 2015–2016 refugee crisis, their popularity has attracted wide attention, not least because of the threats they pose to liberal democracies.

The roots of PRR support, however, continue to be debated. One dominant view attributes PRR parties’ appeal to a “cultural backlash” (Mutz 2018; Norris and Inglehart 2019); others have emphasized the consequences of economic re-structuring among the economically anxious globalization “losers” (Kitschelt 1995; Kriesi et al., 2008). Yet, objective measures, such as (un)employment or low incomes, poorly predict PRR support (Hansen and Olsen 2019; Norris and Inglehart 2019). The evidence on how exposure to refugees influences PRR vote and attitudes is also mixed (Schaub et al., 2021; Steinmayr 2021).

We contribute to these debates by advancing a thus far underexplored argument of rising rent burden as key to understanding contemporary PRR vote. Rising rents lie at the heart of growing concerns related to housing (un)affordability and (over)burden across Western democracies, directly affecting the economic and social well-being of substantial numbers of citizens (Abou-Chadi et al., 2021; Ansell and Cansunar 2021; Inchauste et al., 2018).

Building on, and moving beyond, recent research that emphasizes local rent appreciation as an important geotropic threat that affects leaning toward the PRR (Abou-Chadi et al., 2021), we investigate how individual-level, and thus direct, rent increases affect PRR vote choices. We stipulate that individuals confronted with rising rents are particularly likely to turn to PRR parties. First, not only have globalization and economic re-structuring created “winners” and “losers” of labor markets (Kriesi et al., 2008), but also of housing markets (Ansell 2019). Renters, already at lower ranks of income distribution (Dustmann et al., 2021), are particularly vulnerable to housing market fluctuations and rising prices. The substantial and growing share of rents thus has direct and important implications for households’ budgets, economic (in)security and status considerations. Such concerns have been shown to make PRR rhetoric particularly appealing (Abou-Chadi and Kurer 2021; Gidron and Hall 2020; Kurer 2020).

Second, PRR parties benefit from advancing an explicit cultural framing of this economic issue. Rising rents and housing shortages tie closely with PRR parties’ welfare-chauvinist rhetoric about immigrants’ abuse of, and unjust access to, social benefits over “natives;” increased access to affordable housing by immigrants has been shown to be a particularly important trigger of such attitudes and PRR vote (Cavaillé and Ferwerda 2023). Rising rents heighten receptiveness toward such discourse; situations like the 2015–2016 refugee crisis, provoking an urgent need to house unprecedented numbers of refugees, render them particularly salient.

Finally, PRR parties also stand to gain from politicizing the issue in distinct terms given other parties’ failure to address such concerns, evidenced by the fact that housing costs have risen and the stock of affordable housing declined in recent decades under both right- and left-wing governments (Dustmann et al., 2021; OECD 2020).

To test this argument, we exploit individual-level panel data and leverage within-subject rent changes from Germany. Germany provides a useful test to our theory. Its renter-homeowner ratio is high across Europe, and its housing expenditures have also increased in recent years, especially among renters and lower-income individuals (Dustmann et al., 2021). Support for the PRR Alternative for Germany (AfD) also dramatically increased during this time, from 4.7% in 2013 to 12.6% in 2017. We explore how rising rents contribute to this rise.

We find empirical support for our argument: individuals whose rents increase become more likely to vote AfD; this effect is direct and not driven by overall changes in household income. It is also stronger among lower-income individuals, whose modest budgets are most vulnerable to rising rents, and in high-rent areas where these changes are most directly felt. Additionally, rising rents correlate with refugee hostility; by boosting anti-refugee attitudes, they thus also indirectly boost PRR support. Crucially, the PRR and no other party benefits from rent increases.

We make important contributions to political behavior scholarship. Our argument about rising rents adds important insights into scholarship on the politics of housing markets (e.g. Abou-Chadi et al., 2021; Ansell and Cansunar 2021; Ansell et al., 2022; Ansell 2014; Patana 2022; Scheve and Slaughter 2001). We also refine understandings of the conditions under which economic factors shape PRR support (Abou-Chadi and Kurer 2021; Adler and Ansell 2020; Gidron and Hall 2020; Kurer 2020). Overall, we highlight the importance of future research on housing (un)affordability and rents in shaping political competition.

Housing, rising rents, and PRR support

Culture versus the economy has been the central contention of recent debates about PRR success. Cultural explanations (i.e. individuals threatened by societal change turn to these parties) (e.g. Mutz 2018; Norris and Inglehart 2019) have been particularly influential in understanding their rise. Their appeal is largely attributable to the lack of empirical support on objective economic factors underpinning PRR support (Gidron and Mijs 2019; Hansen and Olsen 2019; Norris and Inglehart 2019), calling into question economic arguments about the economically anxious “losers” of globalization as particularly receptive to the PRR (Kitschelt 1995; Kriesi et al., 2008). Importantly, recent scholarship has refined understandings of how relative economic conditions, such as status anxiety (Gidron and Hall 2020; Kurer 2020), or economic risks within households (Abou-Chadi and Kurer 2021) interact with cultural concerns and shape PRR rhetoric.

Building on these debates, we advance an argument about rising rent burden previously underexplored in PRR and political behavior studies. Despite growing interest in the politics of housing, prior research has primarily examined how homeownership and housing wealth shape attitudes and vote choices. As housing asset appreciation can strongly impact individuals’ wealth and savings by providing additional revenue streams and insurance against eventual economic shocks, it can exert a politically conservative effect on redistribution attitudes (Ansell 2014) and political behavior (Ansell 2019). Fears of asset depreciation may similarly make homeowners more anti-free trade and protectionist in areas with non-competitive industries (Scheve and Slaughter 2001). Growing unaffordability can also undermine demand for housing and redistributive policies and boost support for the conservative right among homeowners striving to keep appreciation high (Ansell and Cansunar 2021).

In line with this logic, recent studies have also established a connection between house prices and Brexit and PRR support at the subnational levels (Ansell et al., 2022; Adler and Ansell 2020; Patana 2022) — PRR rhetoric resonates stronger in declining areas with depreciating house prices. The economic re-structuring of post-industrial societies underpins these dynamics. The decline and dislocation of traditional industry and transition toward agglomeration societies has created clear “winners” and “losers” of housing markets, split between appreciating areas where growth and prosperity are concentrated and depreciating “left behind” ones (Ansell 2019). Homeowners’ political reactions to housing asset fluctuations are thus intimately tied to local housing markets and the local economy (ibid.).

Despite scholars’ interest in housing markets, few to date have examined how concern over rents or affordability might do the same. Abou-Chadi et al. (2021)’s focus on the political economy of rental markets and how local rental markets shape PRR support makes important headway in this regard. Positing local rent appreciation as an important geotropic threat to renters’ economic and social standing in high-rent areas, the authors find that local rent increases make individuals more likely to lean toward the PRR in Germany. We build on, and move beyond, this important research by examining the individual-level effects that rising rents and cost (over)burden have on electoral choices. These direct effects warrant further attention, not least because of widespread and growing concerns about housing cost overburden and (un)affordability across Western democracies (OECD 2020; Inchauste et al., 2018).

Against this backdrop, we hypothesize that rising rents represent an important source of resentment that the PRR can harness in particular. Housing markets’ effect on renters’ electoral choices, however, is distinct from homeowners. First, whereas asset-owning and -building homeowners’ mortgages (i.e. housing costs) are typically more stable and regulated, rising rent burden directly impacts renters’ budgets, economic security and well-being. Lower-income individuals, already disproportionately burdened by housing costs, are far more likely to rent in the first place (Dustmann et al., 2021). Rising rents are thus a direct source of economic anxiety to renters; homeowners’ housing asset fluctuations less so, at least in the short-term.

Moreover, while depreciating housing wealth may contribute to a sense of being “left behind” and PRR success in economically declining areas, the political effects of rent burden should instead be strongest in the more booming areas where rents have strongly appreciated and thus are strongly felt by renters. Homeowners, in contrast, benefit from asset appreciation in these places. Growing unaffordability and rent overburden also heightens the risk of displacement of lower-income renters from these areas, hindering access to opportunity, economic and social mobility (Le Galès and Pierson 2019), and thereby social status. Rising rents thus directly affect households’ financial security and social standing; this makes rent-burdened individuals the biggest “losers” of housing markets. The economically anxious, status-concerned rent-burdened individuals should therefore be particularly receptive to PRR parties’ rhetoric of the “left-behinds” of structural change.

In addition to representing a direct threat to economic (in)security and social status, PRR parties also benefit from politicizing the issue in cultural terms by connecting rising rents to their long-established welfare-chauvinist rhetoric against “immigrants’” abuse of, and unjust access to, state benefits and assistance. Not only do welfare-chauvinistic attitudes predict PRR vote (Goerres et al., 2018), but immigrants’ increased access to affordable housing has also been found to play a particularly important role in activating such attitudes and PRR receptiveness (Cavaillé and Ferwerda 2023). Contexts like the European refugee crisis, which provoked an urgent need to house unprecedented flows of refugees, are particularly likely to raise the salience of rising rents, resentment over them, and receptiveness toward this welfare-chauvinist framing.

Finally, voters concerned with rising rents are likely to support the PRR and not other major parties, given the latter’s past performance on addressing this issue (see next section on the German context). Despite commitment to addressing housing affordability and shortages, mainstream parties’ past policies have contributed to rising housing costs and steep decline in the stock of affordable housing in recent decades (Chou and Dancygier, 2021; OECD, 2020). Importantly, although rent-burdened individuals would plausibly benefit from (radical-)leftist, heavily state-interventionist solutions to this issue, they are unlikely to resonate. Not only can economic insecurity undermine trust in political institutions and thereby government intervention, but much like labor market changes that have engendered “relative shifts in the social hierarchy” undermine support for redistribution among those threatened by these shifts (e.g. Kurer 2020), so too are individuals whose economic and social status is at risk because of rising rents unlikely to prefer such policies and (radical-left) parties, who specifically target the “objectively” worst-off citizens.

The AfD, rents, and refugees

To empirically evaluate our argument, we turn to Germany. Post-war Germany was long a European exception for its absence of a federal-level PRR party. In 2017, however, the AfD experienced an unprecedented rise by becoming the third biggest party with 12.6% vote share, up from 4.7% in 2013 when it was founded.

The AfD rose by strongly politicing the Eurozone bailouts and the 2015–2016 refugee crisis. Evolving from a conservative, soft-eurosceptic party to an anti-immigration PRR party (Arzheimer and Berning 2019), it strongly appealed to voters opposed to Merkel’s “open-door policy” and the influx of mostly Syrian refugees (ibid.; Hansen and Olsen 2019). While these crises undoubtedly influenced the AfD’s rapid rise, the micro-level conditions underpinning its success in politicizing them merit further examination. Local exposure to refugees during the European refugee crisis, for example, was found to exert little influence on existing anti-immigration attitudes in Eastern Germany (Schaub et al., 2021). Objective economic disadvantage does not explain AfD vote either (Hansen and Olsen 2019). The 2013–2017 change in AfD’s vote cannot thus be readily attributed to shocks contributing to economic insecurity or sudden refugee exposure.

We thus focus on rising rents. The issue is particularly salient in Germany: its rental market is far larger than in most European countries (see Appendix). Housing costs have also risen rapidly in recent years, especially among renters and lower-income individuals (Dustmann et al., 2021). This is a major source of concern: over 40% of Germans express concern over their ability to find/keep adequate housing (Dustmann et al. 2021); many have also taken to the streets to protest the “rental insanity.”²

Mainstream parties’ past policies have contributed to these trends, thus making resentful rent-burdened individuals unlikely to turn to them. Rents increased markedly under a right-wing government during the 1990s as a result of large-scale privatization, a reduction of social housing and an increase in residential mobility toward more expensive areas, that is, East to West and rural to urban areas, increasing demand and prices in these areas (Dustmann et al., 2021). This overall trend continued through the 2000s with left-wing parties in governing positions at the national and subnational levels (Dustmann et al. 2021).

The AfD also offers a distinct market-oriented and welfare-chauvinist framing of this issue. Its stance on housing is centered around reducing rental burdens through a substantial increase in the housing stock by reducing regulations and making private development easier.³

Unlike Die Linke and other parties that adopted a positive stance toward refugees in 2015–2016, the AfD has also employed a distinct nativist frame by tying this economic issue to the refugee crisis. AfD politicians have indeed been quick to link their rhetoric on refugees with citizens’ concerns around affordable housing. In Baden-Wuerttemberg, the AfD heavily criticized the “shortcomings in housing policy,” explicitly linking housing shortages and affordability to the refugee crisis and mass migration.⁴ AfD politicians in Saxony and Stuttgart similarly blamed the shortage of affordable housing primarily on the “mass immigration” of 2015–2016 and the preferential treatment of “asylum seekers” over “Germans.”⁵ Thus, rising rents are a central concern in Germany and the German PRR has employed a distinct economic and welfare-chauvinist framing to capitalize on it.

Empirical strategy

To evaluate our argument, we leverage the 2014 and 2018 waves—fielded few months after the 2013 and 2017 federal elections—of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), a large annual representative survey of the same roughly 30,000 individuals (Goebel et al., 2019).⁶ SOEP’s large N and panel structure enables us to precisely estimate the causal effect of rising rents on PRR vote, as well as investigate how rising rents might underpin hostile reactions to the European refugee crisis.

Our DV is AfD vote choice (AfD = 1, other party = 0) in the 2013 and 2017 federal elections. As IV, we use respondents’ monthly rent payments, which we adjust for household size.⁷ To account for non-linearities in the relationship between rents and PRR support, we also include its squared term. Individual-fixed effects account for time-invariant confounders associated with PRR support and year-fixed effects for varying levels of AfD support across election years.⁸ Thus, the two-way fixed effects regression enables us to estimate the causal effect of within-subject rent changes on AfD vote choice. Much of the overtime variation in respondents’ rent payments is due to relocation and changes in household size, but even among those where neither applies, substantial variation between 2013 and 2017 exists (Figure 1 and the Appendix). To control for changes in individuals’ overall economic situation, we include a respondent’s net monthly household income, adjusted for household size and its squared term (cf. Abou-Chadi and Kurer 2021; Gidron and Mijs 2019).⁹

Figure 1.

Distribution of changes in monthly rent between 2013 and 2017 for subgroups of respondents based on whether they relocated and/or their household size changed; N = 3,228 (a), 2,633 (b), 2,242 (c), 776 (d), 1,371 (e), 385 (f).

The 2018 SOEP wave also asks about refugee attitudes, allowing us to use cross-sectional OLS to explore the interplay between economic and cultural factors in shaping AfD vote choice. We thus include two additional DVs: whether 1. Refugees are bad (=1) or good (=11) for the economy and 2. Refugees undermine (=1) or enrich (=11) cultural life. Our IV is the change in an individual’s rent between 2013 and 2017. We include a full set of sociodemographic and political control variables (for summary statistics, see Appendix).

Results

The main results (Models 1–3, Table 1) provide strong support for our core argument about rising rents and AfD vote. A €150 rent increase (= one SD) between 2013 and 2017 makes a respondent 2.6 percentage points (= 18.5*0.15−7.7*0.0225; Model 2) more likely to vote AfD in 2017 (Figure 2). A more substantial rent increase of €300 corresponds to a 4.9 percentage point increase in AfD vote likelihood (both p

<

0.05). The results are substantively similar without the squared term and using the rent/income share as IV instead (Models 1–3). The effect of the latter (Model 3), which speaks directly to the importance of housing (over)burden and not just rising rents, is particularly noteworthy and strong substantively speaking. Importantly, overall changes in households’ income do not drive the results. Nor are they restricted to respondents who moved or saw their household size change (see Appendix). The results thus apply to renters more broadly; relocating or household composition changes affect AfD voting primarily by increasing households’ rental burden.

Table 1.

Vote choice for PRR Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in 2013 and 2017 elections.

	Base sample			West Germany	Urban	Low income	Middle and high income
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)
Change in	0.080^*	0.185^**		0.194^*	0.150⁺	0.387^*	0.141⁺
rent	(0.033)	(0.069)		(0.079)	(0.082)	(0.180)	(0.076)
Change in		−0.077^*		−0.080^*	−0.064⁺	−0.275^*	−0.053
rent-squared		(0.035)		(0.037)	(0.038)	(0.132)	(0.033)
Share rent/			0.396^*
income			(0.160)
Share rent/			−0.321⁺
income-squared			(0.185)
HH income	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
HH income-	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
squared
Individual FEs	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Year FEs	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
N	11,719	11,719	11,617	7927	8316	4750	6969
Individuals	8883	8883	8807	6091	6336	3685	5198

Note: Results from linear probability models with standard errors clustered by respondent in parentheses. The coefficient for rent gives the effect of a €1,000 change in monthly rent on AfD vote choice. HH: household; FE: fixed effect; West Germany: West Germany without Berlin.

⁺p < 0.1,^*p < 0.05,^**p < 0.01.

Figure 2.

The marginal effects of changes in monthly rent on AfD vote choice with 95% confidence intervals.

While our findings are not restricted to a specific geographic region, as expected, the effects are larger for renters in high-rent areas (i.e. West Germany and urban areas) (Models 4–5 and Appendix). Rising rents thus help explain how the AfD expands its support beyond its traditional strongholds (East Germany and rural areas). Indeed, prior research has shown that the AfD, and PRR parties more generally, find particularly fertile ground in economically lagging regions and localities (Arzheimer and Berning 2019; Hansen and Olsen 2019; Schaub et al., 2021). By politicizing rising rents, an issue that disproportionately affects residents in the more prosperous and urban settings, PRR parties can broaden their appeal among individuals in areas where it has thus far remained limited. As also expected, the effect of rent increases is stronger for lower-income households (household income within the bottom third of respondents) (Models 6–7). A €150 rent increase is associated with a 5.2 percentage point increase in AfD vote probability and only 2 percentage points for middle- and high-income individuals.

Crucially, the dynamics we uncover are specific to the PRR as well; no other party electorally benefits from these dynamics. Indeed, and as shown in Tables 12 and 13 in the Appendix, individuals who have experienced a rent increase between 2013 and 2017 are less likely to support or even turn away from the radical-left Die Linke, the party that has most actively advocated for interventionist housing policies like rent control. These results suggest that voters who have recently experienced rent increases see such approaches as having limited impact on curtailing the broader housing market trends. The findings are also unaffected by households’ receipt of government-subsidized housing or housing assistance (see Appendix), suggesting that the economic and social consequences of rising rents directly (and not only indirectly through welfare chauvinism) affect PRR support, and trump support for the interventionist policies advocated by the left. Taken together, our results build on Abou-Chadi et al. (2021) by highlighting how increasing individual-level rental burden boosts PRR vote choice.

Table 2 further tests the welfare-chauvinist mechanism through which rent increases may affect vote choice. Although refugee questions were only asked in 2018, the SOEP panel enables us to include IVs that capture changes in rents and income between 2013 and 2017, an important addition to previous cross-sectional studies (e.g. Hansen and Olsen 2019; Norris and Inglehart 2019).

Table 2.

Rising rents, refugee attitudes, and 2017 AfD vote choice.

	DV = Refugees good for economy			Refugees enrich cultural life			AfD vote choice
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)
Change in rent (2013–2017,	−0.821^**	−1.039^**	−1.648^**	−0.692^*	−0.532	−1.527^**	0.088^**	0.070^*	0.083^*
in €1000)	(0.318)	(0.394)	(0.405)	(0.293)	(0.416)	(0.398)	(0.030)	(0.029)	(0.042)
Rent (in €1000)	1.549^**	1.538^**	1.508^**	1.910^**	1.886^**	1.868^**	−0.051⁺	0.015	0.016
Rent (in €1000)	(0.258)	(0.255)	(0.257)	(0.261)	(0.260)	(0.260)	(0.027)	(0.026)	(0.026)
Change in HH income	−0.120⁺	−0.062	−0.147^*	−0.118^*	−0.061	−0.145^*	−0.009	−0.009	−0.008
(2013–2017, in €1000)	(0.064)	(0.064)	(0.064)	(0.060)	(0.060)	(0.060)	(0.006)	(0.006)	(0.006)
Household income (in €1000)	0.233^**	0.128^*	0.269^**	0.183^**	0.084	0.220^**	−0.011^*	−0.007	−0.008
Household income (in €1000)	(0.052)	(0.058)	(0.049)	(0.053)	(0.060)	(0.048)	(0.005)	(0.004)	(0.005)
Change in rent × household			0.362^**			0.365^**			−0.005
income			(0.127)			(0.113)			(0.008)
Middle and high income		0.328^**			0.297^**
Middle and high income		(0.089)			(0.092)
Change in rent × middle		0.412			−0.262
and high income		(0.514)			(0.510)
Refugees good for economy								−0.017^**	−0.017^**
Refugees good for economy								(0.003)	(0.003)
Refugees enrich cultural life								−0.019^**	−0.019^**
Refugees enrich cultural life								(0.003)	(0.003)
Female	−0.033	−0.029	−0.034	0.270^**	0.276^**	0.269^**	−0.059^**	−0.051^**	−0.051^**
Female	(0.065)	(0.065)	(0.065)	(0.068)	(0.068)	(0.068)	(0.011)	(0.010)	(0.010)
Age	−0.005^*	−0.005^*	−0.005^*	−0.011^**	−0.011^**	−0.011^**	−0.001^**	−0.002^**	−0.002^**
Age	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.002)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Married	−0.178^**	−0.205^**	−0.193^**	−0.176^*	−0.198^**	−0.191^**	0.003	−0.006	−0.006
Married	(0.067)	(0.066)	(0.067)	(0.070)	(0.070)	(0.070)	(0.010)	(0.009)	(0.010)
High school	0.288^**	0.249^**	0.276^**	0.170^*	0.137	0.158⁺	0.004	0.012	0.012
High school	(0.083)	(0.083)	(0.083)	(0.087)	(0.087)	(0.087)	(0.019)	(0.018)	(0.018)
More than high school	1.415^**	1.372^**	1.394^**	1.413^**	1.375^**	1.392^**	−0.041^*	0.007	0.007
More than high school	(0.105)	(0.105)	(0.104)	(0.109)	(0.109)	(0.108)	(0.019)	(0.018)	(0.019)
Rural	−0.400^**	−0.390^**	−0.398^**	−0.381^**	−0.374^**	−0.379^**	0.020⁺	0.019⁺	0.019⁺
Rural	(0.071)	(0.071)	(0.071)	(0.074)	(0.074)	(0.074)	(0.012)	(0.011)	(0.011)
AfD vote choice in 2013							0.448^**	0.371^**	0.371^**
AfD vote choice in 2013							(0.052)	(0.051)	(0.051)
Constant	4.106^**	4.198^**	4.082^**	4.358^**	4.445^**	4.334^**	0.229^**	0.410^**	0.411^**
Constant	(0.145)	(0.147)	(0.146)	(0.149)	(0.151)	(0.149)	(0.033)	(0.037)	(0.037)
Observations	6507	6507	6507	6503	6503	6503	2886	2861	2861
R ²	0.089	0.091	0.090	0.089	0.091	0.091	0.118	0.206	0.206

Note: Results from ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions with Huber–White heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors in parentheses.

⁺p < 0.1,^*p < 0.05,^**p < 0.01.

Rising rents negatively affect respondents’ views of refugees, both as an economic and as a cultural threat: a €150 rent increase is associated with a drop of 0.123 and 0.104 on the 11-point scales, respectively (p $<$ 0.01). This suggests that rent changes also indirectly affect 2017 AfD vote choice at least partially through heightened anti-refugee attitudes.

Models 2 and 5 interact rent changes with a middle- and high-income dummy (1). In line with the welfare-chauvinist argument, low-income respondents confronted with a rent increase are particularly likely to perceive refugees as an economic (coefficient of −1.039; p = 0.008) rather than as a cultural threat (coefficient of −0.532; p = 0.202). Models 3 and 6 and Figure 3 explore the conditional nature of this relationship: the lower the respondent’s income, the stronger the negative impact of rent increases on attitudes.

Figure 3.

Predictive margins with 95% confidence intervals for interaction between changes in monthly rent and income.

Yet, and consistent with results discussed above, Models 7–9 suggest that rent changes primarily affect PRR voting through a direct economic rather than an indirect welfare-chauvinist mechanism. Even after controlling for respondents’ refugee attitudes (Model 8), a €150 rent increase is associated with a 1.1 percentage point increase (p $<$ 0.05) in AfD vote probability (only slightly smaller than the corresponding coefficient without these controls (Model 7)).¹⁰ Crucially, Model 8 underscores how rising rents, unlike other economic variables (i.e. absolute rent payments or overall income), affect PRR support; rent change thus being the only economic variable with a direct and statistically significant effect on AfD vote. This direct effect is not conditional on respondents’ income (Model 9).

Conclusion

Our study makes important contributions to the literature on contemporary PRR support and electoral choices. By uncovering a strong link between rising rents and PRR vote at the individual level in the German context, we add to scholarship of the politics of housing markets (e.g. Abou-Chadi et al., 2021; Ansell et al., 2022; Adler and Ansell 2020; Ansell 2014; Patana 2022; Scheve and Slaughter 2001). We also contribute to research underscoring relative economic conditions underpinning PRR voting (Abou-Chadi and Kurer 2021; Adler and Ansell 2020; Gidron and Hall 2020; Kurer 2020). In so doing, we call for systematic attention on the wide-reaching implications of rising rents on attitudes, political behavior, and party competition in future research.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Rents, refugees, and the populist radical right

Supplemental Material for Rents, refugees, and the populist radical right by Alexander Held and Pauliina Patana in Research & Politics.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Diane Bolet, Denis Cohen, Irina Soboleva and participants at the 2021 European Political Science Association and American Political Science Association Meetings for helpful comments, and Elisabeth Harding for excellent research assistance. Research reported in this article was supported by the Royal Irish Academy. The content of this publication is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Royal Irish Academy.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Royal Irish Academy.

Correction (June 2025):

The article has been updated with correct dataverse link in the supplementary material section. For more details, please see the correction notice: .

ORCID iDs

Alexander Held

Pauliina Patana

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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Notes

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Supplementary Material

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Rents,refugees,and the populist radical right

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Housing, rising rents, and PRR support

The AfD, rents, and refugees

Empirical strategy

Results

Conclusion

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Rents, refugees, and the populist radical right

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

Correction (June 2025):

ORCID iDs

Supplemental Material

Notes

References

Supplementary Material