Ideological alternative? Analyzing Alternative für Deutschland candidates’ ideal points via black box scaling

This study applies black box scaling to the German Longitudinal Election Study candidate survey 2013 to shed light on an emerging right-wing party in Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The scaling procedure extracts two meaningful and robust ideological dimensions described as socialism versus liberalism and libertarian versus authoritarian. Placing the ideal point of candidates from all parties into this two-dimensional space shows that AfD candidates are significantly more market liberal than Christian Democratic Union candidates but not more authoritarian. On these grounds, the AfD can hardly be regarded as a right-wing extremist party. Yet exploring ideological heterogeneity within parties indicates that East German AfD candidates are generally more authoritarian than their West German colleagues, highlighting a potential source of the party’s recent shift from primarily Eurosceptic toward more nationalist conservative positions.