Important E2 contributions to the (e, e ) cross sections of low-lying orbital Ml excitations are found in heavy deformed nuclei, arising from the small energy separation between the two excitations with I K= 2+1 and 1+1,respectively. They are studied microscopically in QRPA using DWBA. The accompanying E2 response is negligible at small momentum transfer q but contributes substantially to the cross sections measured at t/= 165' for 0.6(q,«(0.9 fm ' (40~E;~70 MeV) and leads to a very good agreement with experiment. The electric response is of longitudinal C2 type for (9~175 but becomes almost purely transverse E2 for larger backward angles. The transverse E2 response remains comparable with the M1 response for q, «) 1.2 fm ' (E;~100 MeV) and even dominant for E;)200 MeV. This happens even at large backward angles 0~175', where the M1 dominance is limited to the lower q region. PACS number(s): 25.30.Dh, 21.60.Jz, 27.70.+q I. MOTIVATION Inelastic electron scattering at a backward angle 0=180' was used by Peterson and co-workers [1,2] more than 30 years ago to study nuclear magnetic dipole (Ml) excitations at the linear accelerator in Stanford. The predominance of M 1 excitations in backward scattering is expected from qualitative considerations [2] of the (e,e ') cross section in the plane wave Born approximation (PWBA). The cross section can be decomposed in this case into longitudinal (Coulomb) and transverse (electric and magnetic) terms, multiplied by corresponding kinematical factors. The electric field of the incoming electron can have both longitudinal and transverse components, while its magnetic field is purely transverse. If the electron rest mass and the nuclear excitation energy can be neglected in comparison with the incident electron energy, which is often the case with low-lying excitations, the longitudinal kinematical factor vanishes for 0=180' and only transverse multipoles are excited by the inelastic scattering [3]. The (e, e ') cross section can be related further to the transition probability for photoabsorption through approximate considerations within the "virtual photon" method. One arrives in this way at the rough qualitative estimate [2] for dominant magnetic over electric transverse excitations (both of the same multipolarity). This property is due to the momentum transfer during electron scattering. It stands in contrast with the corresponding relationship for radiative excitation, where no momentum is transferred and the EL excitation is one order of magnitude stronger than the ML excitation (L stands for multipolarity). Electronic address: roland. noj arov uni-tuebingen. dẽ Electronic address: amand. faessler uni-tuebingen. dẽ Electronic address: michael. ding felder uni-tuebingen. de dominance at a backward angle can be drawn by assuming a purely spin-fiip transition [4]. The transverse electric field of the incoming electron is negligibly small in this particular case if the excitation energy E is small in comparison with the transferred momentum q, i.e. , E &&qfi, c. The same result...