the parties invested around 6.9 million euros in advertising on Meta platforms(Facebook and Instagram) and almost 3 million euros in Google ads in the last three months. Lead­ing the field in this regard were the Greens with 3 million euros, followed by the FDP with 1.95 million euros and the SPD with around 1 million euros. The fact that young peo­ple in particular primarily use social media to inform them­selves about political issues has shifted the competition for their attention to this arena. Advertising is one thing, but reach is the harder currency in the online world. While the AfD has dominated social me­dia with its content in all recent elections, this time the democratic parties managed at least partially to reclaim digital space. On TikTok in particular, the AfD was the un­defeated content creator with the most views, but accord­ing to analyses by the Bundeswehr University Munich (Sparta 2025) this dominance seems to have been some­what broken. Looking at the reach the parties received for their posts from the beginning of the year until election day, Die Linke leads the rankings with 14.1 million likes, followed by the SPD with 7.7 million likes, and finally the AfD with 7.4 million likes. A comparison across all platforms by the Frankfurter Allge­meine Zeitung(FAZ, Bothe 2025) shows that the AfD has invested a lot in building up a large following over the years. The AfD leads on TikTok and Facebook, while Alice Weidel takes first place on Instagram, TikTok and X/Twit­ter. Die Linke and the Greens outpace all other parties on Instagram, and the Greens have the most followers on X/ Twitter. Heidi Reichinnek and Sahra Wagenknecht are chal­lenging Alice Weidel on Instagram, and Christian Lindner on X/Twitter. Sahra Wagenknecht is the politician with the widest reach on Facebook. Overall, the analyses show that the field of followers continues to become more differenti­ated and that the AfD’s previous monopoly has been weak­ened. 14 Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung e.V.