German parties and their supporters have started campaigning ahead of the federal elections. Some supporters of the German far-right AfD party have spread a false survey. A DW fact check.
Germany’s political parties have begun presenting their draft election manifestos before the upcoming snap election in February 2025. This is earlier than originally planned (here’s why), and the election campaigns of the major parties have also begun on social media. One survey spread by supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (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.
DW Fact check: 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 Social Democratic Party (SPD), 16 percent for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and 14 percent for the left-wing Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
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.
