Dozens of short messages appeared on the site before voting ended at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) on Sunday, many of which had data very close to the scores revealed by the official exit polls.<\/p>\n
It is illegal to make public exit poll data before voting has finished because people who have yet to cast their ballot could be influenced.<\/p>\n
Those breaking this law face fines of up to 50,000 euros (73,000 dollars). In extreme cases, premature exit poll results could lead to legal challenges against the election result.<\/p>\n
Although several “tweets” — the name given to the messages of less than 140 characters posted on Twitter — had figures that corresponded closely to the final results, others were way off the mark, however.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the federal election commission said a special team had been formed to ascertain whether actual figures obtained from pollsters were leaked.<\/p>\n
But experts were divided as to how much influence a premature publication of exit poll data could have.<\/p>\n
“We need to act energetically against people that publish actual results,” constitutional lawyer Joerg Ipsen, from the University of Osnabrueck, told AFP.<\/p>\n
“Otherwise the freedom and the secrecy of the election is in danger.” Margreth Luenenborg, a media expert at the Free University in Berlin, had a different view.<\/p>\n
“I think this door can no longer be closed,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I reckon that voters are mature enough to handle pre-published results,” she told AFP.<\/p>\n
German politicians were enraged in late August when exit polls for state elections were leaked early on Twitter before voting ended.<\/p>\n
At the time, the deputy parliamentary head of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, Wolfgang Bosbach, said the leaking of the results “damaged democracy.”<\/p>\n
But not all Twitter users, alias Tweeters, were taking it all so seriously on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Early on election-day morning, people began publishing farcical results in jest, with many giving the Internet-friendly Pirate party an impossible double-digit score.<\/p>\n
Another Tweeter wrote: “Forecast for my work ethic next week: Monday, 55 percent, Tuesday, 23.5 percent, Wednesday 10 percent, Thursday, seven percent, Friday 4.5 percent.”<\/p>\n
For the record, official results showed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats clinch 33.8 percent and her partners the Free Democrats on 14.6 percent, handing her preferred centre-right coalition a clear mandate.<\/p>\n
Her rival centre-left Social Democrats registered what their candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier decried as a “bitter defeat” with 23.0 percent. The far-left Linke scored 11.9 percent and the Greens 10.7 percent.<\/p>\n
And the Pirate party? They clinched two percent of the vote with 845,000 votes — much to the pleasure, presumably, of German Tweeters.<\/p>\n