Populist Party Support and COVID-19 Vaccination: Explaining the AfD Vaccination Gap

The COVID-19 vaccination program in 2021 constituted a key public health policy measure to overcome the pandemic in Germany. However, research has identified substantial variations in vaccination uptake across social groups. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, research has indicated that party support influences vaccination uptake, which constitutes an underexplored dimension in Germany. Based on the health belief model, research on the populist right-wing party Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland; AfD) and inequality in the acceptance of public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, we investigated the emerging AfD vaccination gap. Based on monthly repeated cross-sectional data from the Institute for Applied Social Sciences (N persons = 7762) and logistic regression models, we found a pronounced vaccination gap of 28 percentage points between AfD supporters and nonsupporters. While this gap is not due to differences in sociodemographic characteristics and COVID-19 strain, the results from a Karlson–Holm–Breen decomposition reveal that differences in the perception of the pandemic as a threat to personal freedom and civil rights and feelings of missing political representation account for a large share of the AfD vaccination gap. Thus, our results indicate that the political climate prior to a pandemic influences the acceptance of public health measures and that civil movements occurring during pandemics, which address fears and worries related to civil rights and personal freedom, have the potential to substantially reduce the intended results of public health measures.

Citation

Patzina, A., Dietrich, H., Ruland, M., Hoffmann, R. (2025) Populist Party Support and COVID-19 Vaccination: Explaining the AfD Vaccination Gap. KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-025-01015-y