Who won the feed? TikTok campaigning of the alternative for Germany (AfD) and the left in Germany’s 2025 federal election

The 2025 German federal election marked a historic low for centrist parties among voters under 25, a demographic shift that coincided with TikTok becoming a primary news source. Integrating theories of political personalization with research on platformized communication, we argue that the digital resonance of the AfD and Die Linke is underpinned by their strategic alignment with TikTok’s specific logic, though they achieve success through divergent pathways. Analyzing a novel dataset of 3702 TikTok posts, we find that while structural personalization acts as a universal driver of engagement, the two parties mobilize different dimensions of the platform. The AfD excels at exploiting technical affordances like hashtags and duets to maximize visibility, while Die Linke secures engagement by adapting to participatory vernaculars such as humor and trending audio. We conclude that the platformized landscape accommodates distinct mobilization logics, where the radical right optimises for technical visibility to scale reach and the radical left secures engagement by aligning with the community’s participatory norms.