Did Germans students participating in a mock federal election known as U18, for people under 18, overwhelmingly vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, resulting in a sweep by a "massive majority" in every polling district? No, that's not true: A graph shared on social media shows the results of one polling place. While the AfD did win a majority of votes in several German states, the party received 15.4 percent of votes nationally, ranking fourth overall.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on February 17, 2025. It was captioned:
German schools are holding mock elections. The AfD are winning every single one by a massive majority.
The kids are going to be just fine.
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 17 23:30:40 2025 UTC)
Junior Election for the 2025 Federal Election
Results Gauss-Oberschule, Pirna-Sonnenstein (near Dresden)
First vote:
60.7% - Steffen Janisch, AfD
...Second vote:
AfD: 63.5%
CDU: 14.3%
The Left: 7.1%
BSW: 5.6%
SPD: 2.4%
Pirates: 2.4%
Free Voters: 1.6%
FDP: 0.8%
Alliance Germany: 0.8%
Animal Protection Party: 0.8%
Volt: 0.8%
Greens: 0.0%
The Party: 0.0%
...Voter turnout: 68.7%
Not included in this caption was the "day of the vote," Tag der Wahl 13.2.2025, or February 13, 2025.
The German Federal Youth Association (Deutscher Bundesjugendring) explains the purpose and results (archived here) of the U18 federal election for young people under the age of 18 as:
The U18 federal election is a great success: the election result is now final. The U18 election is one of the largest extracurricular education initiatives in Germany. The election results are not to be understood as representative of young people. In the week from February 7 to 14, tens of thousands of young people under the age of 18 voted nationwide. A total of 166,443 votes were cast in 1,812 self-organized polling stations.
The chart below shows the AfD party in blue, in fourth place, with 15.4 percent of the final vote.
(Source: www.dbjr.de screenshot taken on Mon Feb 17 23:52:59 2025 UTC)
In several states, AfD did take first place in the U18 election
The U18 website posted the final results of the mock election state by state (archived here). There were several states where the AfD party did win the highest percentage of votes (below), but this lead was not reflected in the final nationwide totals of this junior election.
- Brandenburg with 35.59 percent
- Thüringen with 35.17 percent
- Mecklenburg-Vorpommern with 34.98 percent
- Sachsen with 31.6 percent
- Sachsen-Anhalt with 30.01 percent
The AfD party did not win in Baden-Württemberg, Bayern, Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Hessen, Niedersachsen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Rheinland-Pfalz, or Schleswig-Holstein.
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