Germany’s Election Campaign Wrap-Up: Numbers and Narratives (Part II)
1. So, social media. Is it important?
The question here is this: does the German election campaign and the publicly expressed opinions we call “reputation” actually matter at this stage? The answer comes from a three-day-old YouGov survey cited by Politico. And yes - it does matter.
20% of potential voters will decide who to vote for in the last few days before the election, according to the YouGov survey conducted for a German news agency.
7% said they would decide on election day.
63% of voters said they get their information from TV, newspapers, radio, and online news portals.
27% of voters use platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube for election information.
40% of AFD supporters rely on social media. The same applies to Die Linke supporters, where 43% get their information from these platforms.
In other words, about a fifth of voters are undecided, and from other surveys we know their most popular second-choice party is the Greens - they could also attract disappointed CDU and SPD voters, as well as some BSW, AFD, and Die Linke supporters.
Most of these voters get their information from traditional media, which we covered in the first part of the review. However, as seen in Romanian and U.S. elections, what happens on social media is equally important. Moreover, social media algorithms do not enforce campaign restrictions - campaigning on TikTok continued even on election day.
This study analyzed text posts on publicly available social media: X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook (only public pages, not personal profiles), and TikTok. Some LinkedIn and other platforms were included as well - roughly 60% of all political content produced on social media. Accuracy or strict comparisons shouldn’t be expected, as there is a significant margin of error (I suspect TikTok’s popularity among Die Linke supporters is underestimated). Nevertheless, the dataset is large and detailed enough to predict trends.
2. How does the campaign finish look on social media, numerically?
Oh dear... It looks very concerning for anyone worried about Russian influence. First: the anti-immigration and pro-Russian AFD completely dominates in terms of number of mentions and strongly leads in audience reach.
The numbers speak for themselves. In traditional media, AFD slightly lags behind the major competitors, but it stands out in communication prominence. Competitors don’t even come close. CDU is holding on somewhat, SPD (the governing party!) has barely 14%, and FDP and the Greens are only a few percent each.
And what about the leaders? Is Alice Weidel as weak here as she appears in professional media?
Here the picture looks a bit better. By number of mentions, the AFD matriarch is roughly on par with the former BlackRock lawyer, but by audience reached, she falls behind. In what kind of media? Here it is.
In short, AFD has a bunch of active supporters on X, who create a lot of content there (no wonder Elon likes Alice so much). However, X’s reach isn’t as large as other platforms – in terms of contacts, Facebook and YouTube reach a much bigger audience. Facebook here refers to public pages, mostly organizations or media outlets – so it’s essentially news import: from traditional to social media.
Can we draw parallels with Trump’s campaign? No. Trump dominated not only on Twitter. The reality-show star completely controlled U.S. news media during both successful campaigns. However, the Romanian Georgescu case(which I wrote about earlier and which now annoys JD Vance and Elon Musk) was superficially similar. A Romanian social media star, ignored by traditional media, unexpectedly surged far beyond what the polls predicted.
And what topics dominate here? Does migration really matter to people? Absolutely.
Yes, very similarly. Social media posts are shorter, making it harder to separate narratives (we captured a much smaller share than in traditional media). But the trend is exactly the same: the three major parties communicate similarly.
This is a good comparison of what matters when talking about parties. In the final stage of the campaign, AFD is the leader on the immigration topic; everything else is just the sidelines of the election campaign. For the leading CDU, immigration policy is also the most important, but they balance it with economic and war-related topics.
Here’s how it looks at a glance. It’s worrying.
3. So what about migration? What are they talking about?
For us, whose largest immigrant groups are culturally close Belarusians, and whose biggest “problem” so far has been some lazy claims to the Vytis, it’s quite hard to understand what’s happening in Germany (and also in Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and elsewhere). The German economy is stalling, unemployment is rising, Russia is growing stronger, Trump is rampaging - so what are they talking about so much?
They talk a lot and in depth. It struck me that in Germany, which long adhered to Angela Merkel’s promoted “Willkommenskultur” (welcoming culture), openly expressing negative opinions about migrants used to be unacceptable, and in this election, that taboo has ended. The CDU leader, Friedrich Merz, defending his decision to rely on AFD votes in the Bundestag to tighten migration policy, said these are the last elections that traditional parties can win if they don’t pay attention to this issue, which matters to the people.
The stories vary - from CDU and AFD votes in the Bundestag to crimes (a lot of crimes) committed by immigrants. Some topics are normal (people who survived the Magdeburg killings are still afraid to go out into the streets), and there are AFD or BSW provocations and cautious xenophobia (yet, compared with the U.S., even the harshest provocateurs speak more carefully).
However, these topics quickly transition into economics. Many immigrants are unemployed, and as the economy slows, unemployment pressures native Germans as well. A major recent topic has been the strained finances of the social welfare system. Housing prices rise when immigrants are accommodated, and there simply isn’t enough housing being built. Adler found dozens, hundreds of such stories just in February. If there’s any lack of free speech, it certainly doesn’t seem to be in Germany - at least during these elections.
4. How worried should we be about the election results?
Panic isn’t necessary, but it’s not entirely calm either. If we assume that about one-fifth of voters are undecided - and that they somehow vote based on media coverage - “Politico” polls strongly underestimate AFD (possibly by 4–5 percentage points). AFD has imposed the migration topic, which has now become important for everyone. On the other hand, AFD clearly has ceilings that aren’t very high. On the other hand, falling BSW ratings should benefit AFD. At one point, these pro-Russian and anti-immigrant parties had 30% support. If that support returns, and both parties enter parliament, reaching, say, 25/5%, that would seriously constrain the mandate of the new government. That’s the worst-case scenario.
One could also think differently - we don’t have all the data (TikTok is an important missing piece), and AFD ceilings are much lower. Alice Weidel isn’t very visible in traditional media. In addition, there’s Friedrich Merz, a fresh face advocating stricter migration - but without radicalism - who is the most visible politician in the country. According to our data, CDU could even grow a bit, but they should win the elections.
SPD is performing poorly. Their activity in traditional and social media cannot explain the relatively high Green Party ratings (though part of the response is visible and noticeable in their leader, Robert Habeck). If the Greens get 13–15%, the FDP liberals - who have a clear message (“Economy First!”) - should comfortably pass 5%. Communication cannot explain the growth of Die Linke (which is visible only in internet search trends), but perhaps the answer lies, as German media suggest, in TikTok, whose videos we couldn’t track in this study due to budget constraints.
These ratings and predictions are just harmless speculation. But to understand what’s happening in Germany, we need to look directly. Three days with Adler allowed me to survey the country in detail with a helicopter perspective - a country whose politics I had never seriously studied before. I hope this has been useful for you too.
At least in broad strokes, we all must understand what’s happening in Germany.
