Boulevard of Broken Promises: Non-Voting and Far-Right Support among the Working Poor in Germany

Bio

Nils Teichler is a postdoctoral researcher in sociology at the Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC) at the University of Bremen. He received his Ph.D. (summa cum laude) from FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg within the graduate programme GradAB, run jointly with the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). His research focuses on the intersection of social stratification and political sociology, with particular emphasis on poverty, job insecurity and their consequences for political attitudes and behaviour. A further line of research addresses the social structuring of climate attitudes and their link to far-right support. Methodologically, he specializes in survey and panel data analysis as well as classification approaches such as latent class analysis. His work has been published in journals such as European Sociological Review and Journal of European Social Policy.

Abstract

In-work poverty has become an increasingly salient form of labour market marginalization in advanced welfare states. When employment fails to provide economic security, it undermines the meritocratic promise that effort is fairly rewarded, fostering grievances that may become politically consequential. This paper examines the political behaviour of the working poor, focusing on two outcomes: electoral abstention and support for the far right. While poverty has consistently been linked to lower political participation and labour market insecurity to far-right support, these strands of research have rarely been brought together. We address this gap by focusing on the working poor as a distinct group located at the intersection of employment and poverty. The analyses draw on data from the German Social Cohesion Panel (SCP), a longitudinal survey conducted since 2021 to study social inequality, social conflict, and social cohesion. The SCP will be introduced in more detail during the seminar. Our results show that the working poor are significantly more likely both to abstain and to vote for the far right. While abstention appears to be driven by poverty alone, the combination of employment and poverty is uniquely linked to far-right voting, an association that remains robust and substantial even when accounting for the structurally precarious labour market position of the working poor. These findings underscore the detrimental consequences of poverty for democratic stability: poverty not only depresses electoral participation but, when experienced despite work, may also channel discontent into far-right support.

Chair 

Leo Azzollini, Università di Trento

Discussant

Yuxin Zhang, Università di Trento

Registration 

Send an e-mail to csis@unitn.it by 4 November 2026, 23:59.