Die Partei: satirical German party gains ground on social media

A German political party that promises to legalise drink driving, introduce cocaine on prescription and kidnap Turkey’s president is winning the social media race ahead of Germany’s federal election, an analysis of Facebook data shows.

Die Partei (“The Party”), founded in 2004 by editors of satire magazine Titanic, has in the month leading up to this Sunday’s vote gathered more new fans on the social network than any other German political party, including the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Overall, and like other populist parties around Europe, AfD vastly outperforms traditional parties on social media. In August, for example, it achieved 440,000 interactions on Facebook – three times as many as leftwing Die Linke and six times as many as Angela Merkel’s centre-right CDU, which is leading in the polls.

Satirical group Die Partei however, led this year by Istanbul-born standup comedian Serdar Somuncu, has grown faster online than any other party, gathering 31,608 new fans compared with the AfD’s 29,302.

In one attention-grabbing stunt, Die Partei’s “propaganda minister”, Israeli-born satirist Shahak Shapira, hijacked 31 AfD-friendly Facebook groups in order to “repair the internet”. In another, the satirical party uploaded its campaign ad to YouPorn.

In its manifesto, Die Partei vows to introduce a system whereby votes in national referendums will be annulled if voters cannot answer simple questions such as “what is the capital of Paris?” – a system it describes as a “moderate epistocracy”.

Christian Democrat Union (CDU)

Along with its Bavarian sister the Christian Social Union (CSU), this is Germany’s main centre-right party and heads the outgoing coalition government. Led by Angela Merkel, it is popular mostly among older, rural, conservative and Christian voters, and is currently polling at 37%.

The Social Democratic party (SPD)

The country’s main centre-left party and the junior partner in the outgoing CDU-led coalition. Strong mainly in industrial western Germany, the party is led by the former European parliament president Martin Schulz, whose return from Brussels sparked an initial surge in support that has now subsided. The party lost a traditional stronghold, North Rhine-Westphalia, in a regional election in May, and is polling at 22% of the vote.

Die Linke

A more radical leftwing party formed in 2007. Strongest in the former East Germany, it has never been part of a governing coalition at national level and is currently the largest opposition party. It is polling at 8-9%.

Free Democrats (FDP)

The free-enterprise, pro-business party has spent more time in government than any other party, but failed to enter parliament in 2013 for the first time. Now thriving under a new leader, Christian Lindner, they are polling at 8-9%.

The Greens

Still find support in west Germany’s university cities but, on 7-8%, are not the force they were in the early 2000s, when they governed with the SDP.

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)

The nationalist, Eurosceptic party – which welcomed both Brexit and Trump – looks likely to enter the Bundestag for the first time in its four-year history. The anti-immigration, anti-Islam party is now represented in every German state in parliament and, while it has been hit by infighting and seen its support fall from 15% at the height of the refugee crisis, is still polling at 10%.

“Looking at the data, it is astonishing how the AfD and Die Partei lead the pack”, said Tilo Kmieckowiak of Quintly, a software firm that provides the social media analysis tool used to compile the data. “It seems like scandalous political outings and provocative humour generate the highest levels of attention. Their data also suggests that there is much room for the other parties to up the ante.”

Even though Die Partei will almost certainly fail to cross the 5% vote-share threshold for seats in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, its attention-grabbing social media campaign has made the group the subject of heated debate. Its fans suggest established parties could learn from its inventive techniques, while critics dismiss the party as “elitist, bourgeois and amoral”.

Stefan Niggemeier, a journalist, has argued that any vote for Die Partei, which entered the European parliament in 2014, was a vote wasted from stopping the AfD’s march into the Bundestag.

The AfD has engaged the services of Texas-based Harris Media, which has worked on online campaigns for Donald Trump and Ukip. However, the extent to which social media will have an impact on Sunday’s vote in Germany remains subject to debate.

Levels of trust in traditional media remains higher in Germany than in other parts of Europe (pdf), and fewer young people use online platforms like Facebook as their only source for news.

“Despite increased media attention and isolated viral phenomena such as the ‘Schulz train’ or the hype around the young leader of the Free Democrats, Christian Lindner, social networks still play a comparatively small role in political communication in Germany, even during the election campaign,” said Paul-Jasper Dittrich, a researcher at the Jacques Delors Institute in Berlin.

As in the rest of the EU, Dittrich said, populist parties like the AfD used social networks, especially Facebook, as a main tool of their communication strategy. “However, compared to other European populists like Marine Le Pen, Beppe Grillo or Jean-Luc Mélenchon who all have more than 1 million followers on Facebook, [AfD chair] Frauke Petry’s 220,000 followers look paltry,” he said.

While the AfD may overall beat off competition from its satirical challengers, its membership numbers remain considerably lower than that of all other leading parties in Germany. According to its press office, the AfD had 29,000 paying members at the start of September, while Die Partei has about 25,000.