ABSTRACT
This chapter compares the Pirates and AfD partie's electoral constituencies in terms of voter's profile and electoral geography, and looks at some organizational aspects of their founding phase. It suggests that the two parties display a very different profile. The Pirates have mobilized a young and internet-based electorate very critical of the traditional means of representative democracy. Party system changes that Germany shares with other European countries are now related to the emergence of the Pirates and the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD). The chapter focuses on three dimensions: cross-partisanship, socio-demographic voter's profile, and geography of the vote. Most recent works on the German party system have focused on national cross-time rather than cross-national comparisons. Both Pirates and AfD show a high level of cross-partisanship. Both drew votes from former abstainers and both cover practically the whole political spectrum, thus displaying an interesting catch-all potential. In the 2009 federal elections, the Pirates had a rather homogeneous vote distribution all around Germany.
