ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the short-term determinants of voting behaviour, namely attitudes towards the European debt crisis and candidate orientations. It analyses the extent to which candidate preference for Chancellor Merkel was the decisive factor in citizen's voting decisions. The chapter outlines a model of vote choice and proposes several hypotheses. It reveals the hypotheses with empirical evidence from regression analyses on how party identifications, policy-related predispositions, candidate orientations, and attitudes towards the European debt crisis affected individual vote choice in the 2013 election. While the AfD leadership attempted to present the party as being pragmatic and non-ideological regarding the European debt crisis, many of its voters appear to have cast their vote predominantly because of the denouncement of European solidarity implied in this policy position. Finally, the chapter explores a predisposition here that is concerned with ethnocentrism and, more specifically, the question of immigration.
