Germany’s political parties have begun presenting their draft election manifestos before the upcoming in February 2025. This is earlier than originally planned (), and the election campaigns of the major parties have also begun on social media. One survey spread by supporters of the far-right (AfD) went viral with more than 370,000 views on TikTok. DW fact-checked the claim made in the posts.
Claim: The poll in this TikTok video allegedly shows a current survey (December 16), which indicates that most respondents in Germany would vote for the AfD in the upcoming federal elections, locally known as the Bundestagswahl.
: False.
The TikTok video was posted by a pro-AfD account with more than 20,000 followers. The video shows a photo of Alice Weidel, AfD’s leading candidate for chancellor, and beneath it a survey, allegedly from December 16, 2024. The survey claims that 28 percent of respondents would vote for AfD, while 25 percent would vote for the , 16 percent for the , and 14 percent for the left-wing .
However, the poll has no connection to the upcoming federal elections and is not current either. The figures come from the Institute for New Social Answers (INSA), a German institute that conducts political and market research, and are related to the Brandenburg state election in September 2024. It was first published on September 17, 2024, before the Brandenburg state election.
The screenshot shown in the TikTok video was taken from a Facebook post of the German private media outletRTL. The source and original date were cropped out in the TikTok video.
According to the latest INSA poll results for the German federal election on December 16, 2024, 31.5% of respondents would vote for the CDU, while 19.5% would vote for the AfD and 16.5% would vote for the SPD.
The post Fact Check: AfD supporters spread false survey about upcoming German election appeared first on Deutsche Welle.
