Immigrant German Election Study II: A Local Panel Study of Immigrant-Origin Voters During the Electoral Campaign of the 2021 Bundestag Election

• As part of IMGES II, media data were collected on a large scale for the first time using automated scraping. Articles from the most important national and regional daily newspapers, as well as selected weekly formats, were included, covering the election campaign period (July–September 2021). These media data enable both descriptive analyses of trends in reporting and their linkage with attitudinal data from the subsequent CATI survey.
• Parallel to the media analysis, a three-wave telephone survey (CATI) was designed to capture attitudes, experiences, and political participation of individuals with and without a migration background. Key steps included the development of a modular questionnaire focusing on attitudes toward migration, experiences of discrimination, political trust, and voting behavior; the sampling design to specifically reach migrant populations; the technical and organizational preparation of the field phase; and pretests to ensure measurement quality.
• The three waves allow not only for the analysis of individual attitudinal dynamics but also for modeling responses to simultaneous media events and political developments.

Do election campaigns have the same effects on people with and without a migration background?

Systematic measurement of election campaign effects in the context of the 2021 federal election.

Implementation of a three-wave telephone survey in the context of the 2021 federal election, alongside the parallel collection of media coverage on key campaign issues, followed by the provision of the data.

• IMGES II followed four groups of eligible German voters with and without a migration background over three survey waves during the federal election campaign. In addition to country-of-origin groups, a distinction was also made between first- and second-generation individuals.
• The results show that members of all groups generally identify as German, although the strength of this identification varies considerably. Political interest increased across all groups over the course of the campaign. Voter turnout differed only moderately between individuals with and without a migration background.
• Party preferences reveal that patterns vary depending on country-of-origin groups, and that previous dominance of certain parties within specific groups has declined. In some groups, distinct preferences also emerge, for example for particular parties on the left or right of the political spectrum.