Study on integration council elections in NRW: AfD strong where competition is lacking

Why do people with a history of immigration, of all people, vote for a party that has been critical of migration for years? This question arises after the 2025 integration council elections in North Rhine-Westphalia. The AfD achieved astonishing results in several municipalities. A political science study by the Universities of Siegen and Duisburg-Essen, published in the Politische Vierteljahresschrift, provides a surprising explanation: it is not social hardship or economic decline that explain the AfD's success, but above all a lack of political competition.

Integration councils, which have since been renamed committees for equal opportunities and integration, are municipal bodies that primarily have an advisory function for city and local councils. They are elected by people with foreign citizenship, dual nationals or naturalized citizens. However, they often receive little public attention. Political scientists Jessica Kuhlmann (University of Siegen) and Prof. Dr. Conrad Ziller (University of Duisburg-Essen) believe that this could be crucial. For their analysis, they examined the 2025 integration council elections in 113 NRW municipalities.

"The AfD was able to achieve particularly high vote shares in places where established parties were barely present or only weakly committed," says Conrad Ziller, citing an important finding of the study. Although the party ran more frequently in municipalities that were affected by rising unemployment or economic tensions, these socio-economic factors were not decisive for the size of the vote share.

"Our analysis shows that if a larger number of established parties compete and actively mobilize for the election, this goes hand in hand with lower electoral success for the AfD," says Jessica Kuhlmann. "If the party competition is weak, it can perform comparatively strongly." This is an indication of structural effects: "Political opportunity structures - i.e. the specific competitive conditions on the ground - play a decisive role."

The findings call widespread assumptions into question. The success of right-wing populist parties is often explained by economic insecurity or social disadvantage. However, the study suggests that institutional conditions are at least as important - even in elections that receive little public attention. "Where there is a lack of democratic competition, spaces are created that are filled by other actors," says Ziller. Even seemingly politically marginalized bodies should therefore be taken seriously.