The economic difference between rural former GDR and, say, Denmark, is pretty huge, and AfD mostly dominates in the former GDR regions, where local industries collapsed almost overnight and all talents got picked off by West German employers.

I traveled around most of Europe with a backpack. Former GDR is a dying country, and no amount of subsidies into fixing roads will help it. You cross the border to Poland, nominally you entered a poorer country, but everything is so much more lively there. Poles are so much more optimistic about their future than Germans in general, and East Germans extra.

This psychological difference cannot be appreciated if you only look at GDP per capita tables.

People don't compare themselves with countries on other continents, but with their neighboring countries or with the memories of their own country (how it was in the past).

Swedes look at the statistics of bombing and shooting incidents in this century, while Finns look at economic growth, GDP and salary growth in the last twenty years, especially compared to other Nordic countries.