At the beginning of the year, a group of potential voters in Berlin involuntarily became a campaign topic themselves: Germans with a migration background. Because after it turned out that some of the rioters from New Year’s Eve were not foreign citizens, the CDU faction in the Berlin House of Representatives wanted to know the first names of the suspects.
For many Berliners with a history of immigration, the parliamentary question from the Christian Democrats seemed like a blanket attack in their direction. And there are many: more than 37 percent of the population has a migration background, of which a little less than half are German citizens.
How exactly people with a migration background vote has hardly been scientifically researched. However, studies from 2017 showed differences in the two largest immigrant groups: while Russian Germans voted conservatively in the majority, only around a quarter of people with Turkish roots voted for the centre-right parties CDU/CSU, FDP and AfD. Election researchers have also gained another important insight: on average, migrants who are eligible to vote do not take part in elections in as large a number as others. So there are votes to be won here.
Almost all of the top candidates appear on German-Turkish radio
Kai Wegner, the CDU’s top candidate, is a few days away from the election in the gym at the Johanna Eck School in Tempelhof-Schoeneberg. More than half of the students there have an immigrant background. The fact that Wegner is now interrupting the young people when doing push-ups does not seem to convince them to vote for the CDU in the future. “Turkiye, Türkiye”, call two. Wegner smiled wryly, but later emphasized that the CDU didn’t want to question the diversity of the city: “We’re a diverse metropolis. And it has to stay that way,” he says, “but there have to be rules that apply to everyone .” With this message he also wants to reach people with an immigrant background.
Just a few days ago, Wegner gave an interview to the German-Turkish radio station MetropolFM. Franziska Giffey also wants to give her last interview there before election Sunday on Friday. In the debate about the New Year’s Eve riots, the Governing Mayor quickly announced an integration message: “They’re almost all Berlin children, they were born and grew up here.”
Leaflets in Russian, posters in Turkish
Your SPD also distributed leaflets in English, Turkish and Russian during the election campaign. And while the Greens tried to depict the city’s diverse society on their election posters, the left hung around 2,000 election posters in different languages on lampposts – in Marzahn-Hellersdorf Polish and Russian, in Neukölln Arabic and Turkish.
However, the Berlin parties hardly organized their own meetings of their top candidates with migrant groups. In the week before the election, only the Greens had planned a “migrant business tour,” but canceled it because their top wife, Bettina Jarasch, was visiting the ARD lunchtime magazine. There is a consensus among party strategists from all camps: migrant voter groups tend not to be encouraged by an election campaign specially tailored to them. Content is more important.
And so the left, for example, is trying to win over people with foreign names, who are often disadvantaged on the rental market, by demanding the expropriation of housing companies. Meanwhile, the SPD is observing an increased interest in educational topics. The liberals hoped to reach performance-oriented men with a Turkish background with a car-friendly transport policy.
Meanwhile, after New Year’s Eve, the CDU advertised on posters with the saying: “What criminals will soon hear more often: arrest warrant”. An allusion to the Offenbach rapper Aykut Anhan, who appears under this name. It remains unclear whether the core clientele of the CDU took this hint – and whether people with a migration background didn’t feel more provoked.
744,915 of them, i.e. around 23 percent of adult Berliners, will not vote anyway – because they are not allowed to vote. You do not have a German passport.