Fact check: No, AfD didn't win mock German youth election

Political parties and candidates are scrambling to curry favor with undecided voters ahead of German parliamentary elections on February 23. 

According to recent polls, the conservative CDU/  CSU alliance is expected to win, with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as runner-up. The party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrats (SPD), ranks third in that poll.

A statement circulating on social media platform X has now gained traction, claiming the AfD had won in mock national elections held for high school students.

Claim: "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," writes an anonymous user on X who calls themselves a "defender of Western values and culture" operating from England. The account has more than 200,000 followers.

Elon Musk, tech mogul and owner of the platform, shared the post, adding: "The kids understand." Musk's post was viewed close to 12 million times.

DW Fact check: False.

The AfD did not win in a landslide victory in mock elections in German high schools. The photo attached to the tweet does not hold up as proof — it only shows a partial vote count by a school in Pirna, a town in Saxony in eastern Germany.

The first such youth elections for high school students were held in 1999. These mock elections are meant to educate students as part of the curriculum on democracy.

Only German citizens over 18 are allowed to vote in Germany's federal elections.

'No results yet' as elections aren't over

However, the AfD simply couldn't have won the youth elections, because the elections aren't over yet, said Florian Wolf, who heads the youth elections project.

"Results are calculated on Saturday when the electronic ballot box will be closed," he told DW.

That means as of now there is no information available — and it was prohibited to publish partial results.

Wolf said schools weren't allowed to publish results before 6 p.m. on February 23, adding that he couldn't check whether the school in Pirna had violated these terms because of school holidays in Saxony.

U18 elections: Left Party secures win

In addition to mock elections at high schools, there is a second set of elections for young people in Germany: the U18 elections. This unofficial trial run for children and teenagers first kicked off in 1996 and always takes place nine days before Germany's parliamentary elections.

Everyone in Germany who's under 18 is allowed to take part in these mock elections. From February 7 to 14 more than 166,000 children and teenagers went to the ballot box.

The U18 elections also didn't show a nationwide AfD win, as claimed by the above-mentioned X post. On the contrary, the party placed fourth, behind the Left Party (20.8%), Social Democrats (17.9%) and CDU/CSU (15.7%).

The results shown on X are not part of the U18 elections, says Matthias Starz, spokesperson for the U18 elections. "There is no polling station in the Gauss high school in Pirna," he said.

This article was adapted from German by Sarah Steffen.

Edited by: Rachel Baig