LAUSR

Understanding the psychological basis of individuals' voting intentions is of tremendous importance because voting for specific parties and politicians can influence political developments. In the present study associations of individuals’ satisfaction of each of Maslow’s five basic need categories with voting intentions were investigated in a German sample and these results were compared to results on associations between personality and voting intentions. An online survey was completed by N = 2593 (n = 1035 men) individuals. Participants provided information on socio-demographic characteristics, filled in the Need Satisfaction Inventory, the Big Five Inventory, and stated which of the major German parties they would vote for if general elections were held the following Sunday. Data were analyzed using the statistical software R and RStudio. Among others, it was found that higher satisfaction of physiological needs and higher satisfaction of safety and security needs were associated with intentions to vote for the currently governing party alliance, the CDU/CSU, versus for the right-wing AfD. Regarding personality, among others Openness was positively associated with intentions to vote for nearly every party (except the CDU/CSU) versus for the AfD. Effect sizes of associations were overall rather small; generally speaking, those related to the Need Satisfaction Inventory were even slightly smaller than those found for personality traits. The present results indicate that other factors aside from needs and personality must be considered to understand voting. Therefore, this study sets a starting point for further investigations to replicate and expand the present findings.