Extreme right suffers from Internet access

A team of researchers from LMU Munich, Max Planck Society andthe British Stirling University
20% fewer votes for extreme right-wing
Their results indicate that increasing DSL Internet availabilityfrom 0 to 100% decreases voter turnout relatively by 3.0 to 3.9%.For most individual parties Internet availability has no impactwith one exception: extremist right-wing parties receive, onaverage, 0.4% fewer votes when Internet availability increases from0 to 100%. Given their average voter share of 2.2% in Germany, thisis equivalent to a relative decrease of almost 20%.
“A possible explanation for the negative effect of the Interneton voter turnout is that the Internet carries less or otherinformation than the media [like newspapers] that it crowds out,”the paper argues. Further examination of the data indeed shows thatInternet availability has a negative effect on national newspapercirculation which in turn decreases voter turnout. For localnewspapers and local elections, this cannot be observed.
For the full research paper, please click
* 10%, ** 5%, *** 1% significance
