How the AfD Is Laying the Groundwork for Allegations of Election Fraud

Ahead of the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD is currently stepping up its warnings about manipulation in mail-in voting and is recycling a well-worn narrative to do so: nursing homes as hubs of election fraud. Tino Chrupalla and Ulrich Siegmund, in particular, have been particularly vocal on this issue in recent days.

What exactly happened?

• More than a week before Tino Chrupalla warned about alleged election fraud in nursing homes during Sunday’s ARD summer interview, Ulrich Siegmund had already done so very successfully on social media (calling on nursing staff and relatives to “take a close look”). With his content and personalization strategy, Siegmund is already extremely effective at reaching AfD supporters and voter groups on TikTok, X, and other platforms.
• AfD supporters and disinformation spreaders gratefully seized upon the accusation, while Chrupalla’s take was received much less frequently a week later—the narrative had already been established. At the same time, the party leader also cast a blanket suspicion on mayors, some of whom were said to be the only ones holding the “keys to city halls.”
• However, this week saw more extensive coverage and “denials” from the state election commissioners of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: They stated that absentee voting is secure.
• At the same time, the AfD portrays itself as the protector of nursing home residents and the “elderly and vulnerable.” Through absentee voting, their votes would be “determined by others.” This is also frequently projected onto the family context—for example, when the “left-wing, green-leaning grandson” marks the ballot for his “grandmother with dementia.”
• Yet the nursing home lie is nothing new: Whether it’s the FPÖ in Austria in 2016 or Donald Trump in 2022: sowing doubt about votes from nursing homes is a well-known strategy of right-wing populists both before and after an unfavorable election result.
• The message is clear: only state-sanctioned “election fraud”—primarily through manipulated mail-in voting—could still prevent the AfD from forming a single-party government.

The fact that this issue is only now reaching the (media) public and provoking political reactions exemplifies how agenda-setting from the right works through disinformation: In social media discourse, topics are spread “under the radar,” thereby creating a sounding board for their transition into the broader public discourse.

What does this mean in the run-up to the election and beyond?

The strong reaction to the new mail-in voting statistics and reports of errors on ballots could be a foretaste of what lies ahead for us in the run-up to the election and, above all, afterward (depending on the outcome): a fundamental undermining of electoral integrity and trust in democracy.

Data: Communications (n: 653,560) from a selection of relevant disinformation accounts and AfD-affiliated groups on X in August regarding mail-in voting.

Analysis by Ralph Friedrich and Hannah Schimmele.

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