TikTok and its role in the 2025 German Elections 

20.06.2025

While TikTok is becoming increasingly relevant among social media users, its role in elections remains understudied. The successful social media campaign targeting youth by the party Die Linke has drawn attention to new social media platforms that had previously received little focus, as they have only recently become politically relevant. While researchers in Germany have most commonly addressed the study of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter (now X) and their use in electoral campaigns, we know very little about how German politicians use TikTok, as the platform's success is relatively recent. In this respect, recent data show that the number of Twitter/X users in Germany in 2025 was around 21.63 million (DataReportal 2025). Already in 2024, TikTok had exceeded this audience with 22.9 million users in Germany (World Population Review 2025). This means that the German TikTok community is the second largest in the European Union, only behind France, and includes 2 million more users than Italy, which ranks third.

Despite the platform’s potential audience, German politicians do not seem particularly fond of TikTok. According to data collected by Steup and others (2025) on the social media accounts of candidates in the 2025 elections, only 787 out of 2,664 politicians had a TikTok account during the 2025 electoral campaign. The number is higher for Twitter/X, with 1,162 candidates present on the platform, while only 645 had a YouTube channel.

But did those politicians with a TikTok account actually use it for campaigning? To answer this question and to understand the dynamics and potential payoffs of having a TikTok presence, we collected all TikTok posts from Bundestag candidates during the 2025 campaign and analyzed how they used the platform for social media communication.

As shown in the image below, there is a clear decline in the number of posts following the election. Politicians’ activity increased as election day approached but dropped sharply afterward. This suggests that candidates did, in fact, use TikTok primarily for campaign purposes.

If we examine how TikTok was used during and after the 2025 German election campaign, we can observe differences across regions and between parties. In the graph below, the upper part shows the parties responsible for the highest number of TikTok posts. The lower part identifies the party with the highest number of active TikTok users in each German state. Additionally, we distinguish between activity before (left side of the plot) and after (right side of the plot) the election.

Overall, the AfD clearly had the strongest presence on TikTok both before and after the election. As shown, several regions in Germany had more AfD politicians active on TikTok than those from other parties. However, there appears to be a clear post-election effect: after February 23, 2025, the highest number of posts from political candidates came from AfD members, who produced the majority of content in 10 federal states, including Berlin.

But did these posts receive the expected level of engagement?

When we examine the average number of likes, comments, shares, and plays, it becomes evident that although the AfD was more active, it did not receive a comparable level of attention relative to other parties. As shown in the graph below, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) was the party that attracted the most engagement on TikTok. Although BSW did not have the largest presence on the platform—neither in terms of number of candidates nor posts—its content, on average, received the highest number of plays, comments, likes, and shares.

This is likely due to the party’s strong personalistic nature. Most of the content was published through Sahra Wagenknecht’s personal account, making her the focal point of the party’s TikTok strategy. In contrast to other parties, where engagement was distributed across multiple politicians with varying levels of visibility, interest in BSW was concentrated on its leader’s content. At least, this is our interpretation of the high average engagement the party received despite its relatively modest presence on the platform.

Conversely, the average engagement on AfD posts was significantly lower. However, this could be explained by the larger number of AfD politicians actively posting, which resulted in a higher volume of political content overall. In any case, based on the electoral results, we argue that average engagement may not be a reliable indicator of a successful social media campaign.

In conclusion, TikTok is becoming increasingly important in German politics, and early trends suggest that a broader presence—featuring a larger number of active politicians—may be more effective than an intensive strategy focused on fewer individuals posting more frequently. This hypothesis, of course, requires further analysis. Still, it is important to recognize that TikTok may have secured a meaningful role as a tool for electoral campaigning, even in a country like Germany, where politicians are traditionally less inclined to use social media compared to counterparts in countries such as the United States, India, or the United Kingdom.

Sources:

DataReportal (2025) Hochrechnung zur Größe des Werbepublikums von X (Twitter) in Deutschland in den Jahren 2020 und 2025 (in Millionen). Statista. Statista GmbH. Available at: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1220562/umfrage/werbereichweite-von-twitter-in-deutschland/ (Accessed: 12 June 2025).

Steup, Johannes Maximilian, Kielbassa, Pauline, Neumeier, Andreas, & Riedl, Jasmin (2025). Social Media Accounts (TikTok, YouTube, X/Twitter) of the Candidates in the 2025 German Federal Election. GESIS, Cologne. Data File Version 1.0.0, https://doi.org/10.7802/2862. 

World Population Review (2025) TikTok users by country 2025. Available at: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/tiktok-users-by-country (Accessed: 12 June 2025).