Social media: MPs on the internet: Wagenknecht has the most followers

According to a current evaluation, Sahra Wagenknecht is the Bundestag member with the greatest reach on social media. The candidate for chancellor of the alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which has only existed for a year, has the largest digital following of MPs with 2.92 million followers across platforms, according to an analysis by the influencer marketing agency Netzschreier.

The AfD chancellor candidate Alice Weidel comes in just behind Wagenknecht with 2.74 million followers. FDP leader Christian Lindner follows in third place at a greater distance (1.84 million followers). Among the other candidates for chancellor, Olaf Scholz (SPD) came in sixth place with 1.14 million subscribers, Robert Habeck (Greens) in eighth place with 965,000 followers and Friedrich Merz (CDU) in ninth place with 799,000 followers.

For the ranking, the agency evaluated the public accounts of 732 members of the Bundestag in January. That’s almost all of them – the Bundestag officially had 733 members this month, as a spokesman announced. Profiles on the platforms Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, YouTube and Tiktok were included in the evaluation. 15 of 732 MPs do not have a public account on social media. They share last place in the ranking.

The agency also compared the number of followers of all members of a parliamentary group. The AfD is in the lead here with a total of 6.72 million subscribers – even though it is only the fifth largest parliamentary group in the Bundestag. The Greens (6.24 million followers) and the SPD faction (6.04 million followers) take second and third place. Behind them are the Union faction in fourth place (4.58 million followers) and the FDP faction in fifth place (3.61 million followers).

Many profiles on Facebook – Tiktok “least developed”

The calculation also shows differences when comparing the platforms. It is said that the video app Tiktok is “the least developed” social network among federal politicians. Only 96 MPs have a public account there. The most popular platform is Facebook: according to the data, 687 MPs have profiles there.

For the evaluation, Netzschreier identified 2,357 public profiles based on the official Bundestag website and the MPs’ websites. Additional research was carried out for the top candidates of all parties. It was taken into account that some of these politicians had created new profiles or reactivated old ones shortly before the election campaign, it was said.