These were major goals that the then Prime Minister of Hesse, Volker Bouffier, announced for the Christian Democrats in June 2019.

It must be possible to reach millions of followers, said Bouffier and announced that the Hessian Christian Democrats would position themselves better for their social media activities.

With this, Bouffier had also reacted to the attacks by Youtuber Rezo, whose video "Destruction of the CDU" had been viewed several million times and had caused a great deal of media coverage.

More than three years later, the desired millions of followers are not in sight, as expected, but the Hessian CDU has been able to expand its online presence.

The deputy spokesman, Thorsten Weber, confirmed this on Monday when asked by the FAZ.

He announced that he wanted to further increase the reach of the Christian Democrats.

In addition, a podcast was developed, which is already being heard by around 5,000 people.

"It's going really well," Weber said.

People's Party in transition

The CDU wants to actively participate in the social changes in the country.

On Monday evening, Hesse's Prime Minister and CDU state chairman Boris Rhein discussed the development of Christian democracy with the federal chairman Friedrich Merz and the leader of the parliamentary group in the Hessian state parliament, Ines Claus.

"Our People's Party in Transition" was the headline of the summer talks in the Flörsheim Sektkellerei Falkenberg.

The user numbers of the CDU on the Facebook platform are also changing.

While the state association still had around 12,000 subscribers in 2019, there are now (as of Monday) 16,701 people who follow the Hessian CDU on Facebook.

The Christian Democrats have a little less than 40,000 members in the country.

The youth organization Junge Union has 5,218 subscribers with a total of around 11,000 members.

"We're staying on the ball and of course we want more," said Weber about the numbers.

He went on to say that the CDU is trying to address people with simple, short and emotional texts, but at the same time to communicate seriously.

"If I cross the line of good taste, I'll certainly have a lot of clicks, but that's not our goal," he clarified.

The acquisition of new subscribers on YouTube was not quite as successful.

In 2019, 108 people subscribed to the channel, and the head of the social media team at the time, Deliah Eckert, admitted when asked: "Our 108 subscribers are not many, there is still room for improvement." The channel "cduhessentv" currently has 169 subscribers, although the live stream from the most recent state party conference was viewed more than 1,000 times.

“We deliberately do not use YouTube because we focus on other channels.

For us, YouTube is now a technical tool, for example to stream the state party conference.

We will then embed the YouTube link on our homepage,” Weber explained, explaining that there was only a very limited increase in subscribers for the CDU on YouTube.

The other Hessian parties are not idle either: the SPD has 13,260 followers on its Facebook account, and the youth organization Jusos has 1,279 people who follow it on Facebook.

The Hessian Greens have 6,843 followers and their youth organization 1,694. But the FDP also has 6,803 people who follow it on Facebook, and its youth organization, the Julis, is of interest to 3,087 people.

The left has 8,354 followers in the state and its youth organization Solid has 1,073. The undisputed leader is the AfD with 29,963 subscribers who follow the party in Hesse.

The young Alternative Hessen has 3654 followers.

SPD with 7800 Twitter followers

It's a little different on Twitter: The Hessian SPD has 7,806 followers and the CDU 8,945. The Greens have 9,794 subscribers and the Liberals 6,211. The Left Party is interesting for 3,365 people, but the AfD is again at the top with 11,700 followers.

"Twitter has its own clientele that is active there," said Weber about the fact that the smaller Greens and the AfD have more followers and added: "The average German citizen does not necessarily tweet," you can find in other social networks.

"We use Twitter less to reach the masses of people," Weber continued.

Younger people between the ages of 18 and 30 are on Instagram.

"As a party, the reach on Instagram is significantly lower than on Facebook, for example," said Weber, adding that this applies to all parties.

The CDU has around 3800 followers there, the SPD "a good 4000", the Greens 4900 and the FDP around 2600 subscribers.

The AfD has 1,627 followers and the left has 1,559. "But all of our members who are active at state level also have their own Instagram accounts," explained Weber, expressing the conviction that Instagram works primarily through personality.

"Our group leader Ines Claus is very active there," said Weber.