Saxony-Anhalt and the politics of growing up online
The AfD’s polling lead in Saxony-Anhalt raises obvious questions about younger voters and the political environment they are growing up in, but my master’s research suggests that the relationship between age, social media, and political choice is more complicated than simply saying that young people are moving to the right.
The polls are difficult to ignore
The polls ahead of Saxony-Anhalt’s September election are difficult to ignore. A Forschungsgruppe Wahlen survey published on 3 September put the AfD at 41%, compared with 23% for the CDU, while several other recent polls have also placed the AfD above 40%. These are still voting intentions rather than election results, but when a party is polling at that level, we are no longer talking about a party that exists mainly as a protest option. We are talking about a party that could realistically compete for political power.
What interests me here is how this connects to the political environment in which younger Germans are growing up. Statewide polling obviously cannot tell us exactly how young people in Saxony-Anhalt will vote, but it does give us another reason to look seriously at the relationship between media consumption, political visibility, and support for parties that position themselves against the political establishment.
What my research showed
In my master’s thesis at LMU Munich, I looked at generational differences in media use and voting during the 2025 federal election using data from the German Longitudinal Election Study. One of the clearest differences was where people were getting their political information. In my sample, 62.7% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 28 identified social media as their most important source of political information, compared with only 8% of respondents over 62.
That is a very large difference, and I think it matters because it means that different generations are not simply consuming different political opinions. They are experiencing politics through completely different media environments.
(My thesis and research summary)
At the same time, one of the more interesting results from my research was that the relationship between social media use and predicted AfD support was not limited to young people. AfD support among social media users remained comparatively elevated across different age groups, while Die Linke showed a much clearer youth pattern. This does not mean that using social media causes somebody to vote for the AfD, because the data is observational and cannot establish that kind of causal relationship, but it does suggest that the relationship between political platforms and voting behaviour is more complicated than age alone.
The official representative statistics from the 2025 federal election make the same point from another direction. Die Linke was the strongest party among voters aged 18 to 24 with 27.3%, while the AfD led among voters aged 25 to 34 with 20.8%. Those figures come from a national election rather than the upcoming election in Saxony-Anhalt, but they are still useful because they show why talking about “young voters” as one political group does not make much sense.
Established parties cannot rely on their name anymore
I think populist movements often become effective when they take frustration that people already have and give it a simple political explanation. They tell people that they have been ignored, identify an establishment that is supposedly responsible for their problems, and then present themselves as the people willing to take control and change things.
Social media makes it much easier for those arguments to become familiar because people can encounter them repeatedly in videos, posts, comments, clips, and discussions without actively looking for political content. Over time, a party that once looked extreme or outside the political mainstream can begin to look like an ordinary political option simply because people see it constantly.
That does not mean AfD and Die Linke voters are interchangeable, and it does not mean that the parties themselves are equivalent. What it does mean is that established parties cannot assume that political authority automatically comes with being an established party.
For me, the polling in Saxony-Anhalt is another warning about that problem. Reaching younger voters obviously requires politicians to understand where younger people actually encounter politics, including social media, but being present on those platforms is only part of the answer. You still need to give people something credible to support. Better videos and better social media strategies are useful, but they cannot indefinitely compensate for a future that people feel is becoming less affordable, less stable, or less accessible.
- Politics
- Opinion
- Germany
- Elections
- Social Media
Related project
Generational Divide in Media Use and Voting BehaviorMaster's thesis at LMU Munich on how generational differences in news consumption shaped party choice in the February 2025 German federal election.