Selected witness · Thuringia · AGS 16075
Saale-Orla-Kreis
Included in the predeclared 300-district common sample.
- AfD 2019
- 27.1%
- AfD 2024
- 37.6%
- Change
- +10.6 pp
- Population lens
- −0.12 SD
Data story · Political economy · 2 September 2026
Regional Retreat Reached the Ballot Box.
AfD support rose across German districts. Population retention—not aging by itself—is the strongest observed regional-capacity correlate. Whether politics now deepens the retreat remains an untested feedback loop.
396 Kreise · 2024 political geographyPopulation retention
vs AfD share
vs AfD share
Case file 01What the record establishes
Median Kreis · AfD share7.03 → 15.18%
2014 to 2024; 9.63% at the 2019 midpoint.
2024 median · geography31.91 / 14.02%
Eastern non-city Länder versus West; Berlin separate.
Population-retention coefficient-2.446 pp
Per standard deviation within Länder; adjusted p=0.0345.
The proposition
The political geography is visible. The mechanism is not yet a verdict.
In August, I argued that regional retreat was becoming political: thinning services, shrinking opportunity, demographic loss, and weaker local capacity could increase demand for parties whose policies might make those conditions worse.
That is a consequential proposition because it joins two different claims. The first is empirical: places under greater regional pressure should show a distinct political pattern. The second is dynamic: electoral success should feed back into capacity through policy. One dataset cannot identify both.
Original proposition · LinkedIn
“Regional retreat is becoming political. The AfD could make it worse.”
Visible fact · The vote moved
The median district shifted by more than five percentage points.
Across the 396 stable Kreise, the median AfD share in the European Parliament election rose from 7.03% in 2014 to 9.63% in 2019 and 15.18% in 2024. The median district-level change between the last two elections was 5.36 percentage points.
Levels remained sharply different. The 2024 median reached 31.91% across the five eastern non-city Länder and 14.02% in the West. Yet that contrast is an orientation, not an explanation. History, party organization, income, migration, settlement structure, and institutional trust all travel with geography.
Evidence dossier · District on the witness stand
Choose a Kreis. Keep the claim boundary fixed.
One district travels through the election trajectory, capacity field, and coefficient test. The selector changes the witness—not the rules of evidence.
Exhibit 01 · Descriptive trajectory
AfD support rose. The starting points were already different.
Valid-vote share · European Parliament elections
Current lensWorking-age population retention
Higher values mean stronger retention or growth among residents aged 20–79.
Exhibit 02 · District evidence field
Working-age population retention and 2024 AfD support
Deviation from each Land average
Eastern non-city West Berlin Outside 300-district estimation sample
Exhibit 03 · Predeclared inference
Population retention survives. Aging alone does not.
AfD share percentage points per 1 SD · 300 districts
Selected district · exact values
| Measure | Value | Unit / orientation |
|---|---|---|
| AfD valid-vote share, 2014 | 8.338 | percent |
| AfD valid-vote share, 2019 | 27.057 | percent |
| AfD valid-vote share, 2024 | 37.641 | percent |
| Working-age population change | −0.232 | annualized percent; higher = stronger retention |
| Old-to-young ratio change | +0.285 | annualized percent; lower = less aging pressure |
| Employment per resident change | −1.236 | annualized percent |
Current test · exact estimate
- Coefficient
- −2.446 pp / SD
- Approx. 95% interval
- [−3.687, −1.205]
- Wild-cluster p
- 0.0011
- Family-adjusted p
- 0.0345
The URL preserves this evidence state.
Saale-Orla-Kreis. AfD 27.1 percent in 2019 and 37.6 percent in 2024. Working-age population retention: −0.12 standard deviations.
Counter-evidence · Three limits that change the claim
The strongest result is narrower than the original story.
Aging by itself does not survive.
The lower-aging-pressure component has a coefficient of -0.374 percentage points and an adjusted p-value of 0.9989. The evidence does not support a portable sentence that older places simply produce more AfD support.
The composite is not the result.
The three-component capacity measure points in the expected direction, but its family-adjusted p-value is 0.2238. Compressing population, aging, and employment into one “retreat score” would hide the fact that the components behave differently.
Policy feedback is unobserved.
The release contains election outcomes and regional-capacity changes. It contains no treatment that measures AfD policy, no governed public-service withdrawal panel, and no post-treatment outcome. The second half of the feedback loop therefore remains a hypothesis.
Capacity and political support move together in one bounded way.
- Official AfD valid-vote shares for 2014, 2019, and 2024 on one stable district geography.
- Official 2022–2023 population and employment inputs.
- One family-adjusted component result: stronger working-age population retention is associated with lower 2024 AfD support within Länder.
Identification gap
AfD influence causes services and regional capacity to retreat further.
- A policy exposure or quasi-experimental treatment is required.
- Comparable service, investment, migration, and employment outcomes must follow the treatment.
- Pre-trends, concurrent shocks, and selection into political control must be tested.
Verdict · publish with limits
Regional retreat is visible in the political geography. The feedback loop remains a hypothesis.
Population retention, not aging by itself, is the strongest observed capacity correlate of 2024 AfD support within Länder. That sentence survives the predeclared evidence. A causal demographic mechanism, an electoral prediction, and the claim that AfD policy worsens regional capacity do not.
Retain people
For regional policy, the measurable warning is loss of working-age population—not chronological aging alone.
Measure services
Build a harmonized panel of public-service access, local investment, migration, and employment before claiming a retreat mechanism.
Test the loop
Use changes in political control or policy exposure with credible comparison regions and pre-trend evidence.
Methods · compact, predeclared, reproducible
One stable geography. Separate components. No causal shortcut.
The release harmonizes official 2014, 2019 and 2024 European-election results to 396 stable Kreise. AfD support is votes divided by valid votes. Capacity is measured through separate 2022–2023 changes in residents aged 20–79, the old-to-young ratio, and employment per resident.
The association results use equal-weight OLS with Land fixed effects, a 300-district common sample, CRV3 standard errors, 9,999 null-imposed wild-cluster replications, and Romano–Wolf adjustment across the predeclared family. The approximate intervals shown in the chart use 14 cluster degrees of freedom.
This story extends the public research record in Composition Is Not Adjustment, which explains why comparison across places, adjustment within places, and causal effects are different estimands.
396stable districts in the descriptive panel
300districts in the common estimation sample
15Land clusters in the primary estimates