Saturday, December 21, 2024

GERMANY

Fact Check: Far-right AfD supporters spread false survey

Kathrin Wesolowski
December 19, 2024
DW

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.


Alice Weidel is running for chancellor for the far-right AfD
Image: Carsten Koall/dpa/picture alliance


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 survey is old and is not related to the upcoming federal elections
Image: TikTok

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.

This screenshot shows the original survey within the context of the Brandenburg state election
Image: RTL Aktuell/Facebook

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.


Edited by: Rachel Baig

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