German website stops Tesla poll

The question was simple, the result was clear for the time being: around 100,000 people took part in a German online survey last week asking whether users would still buy a Tesla. The question was aimed at the political activities of Tesla CEO and business magnate Elon Musk. Even if the result of such an online survey without defined access criteria is not representative, asking whether and how Musk’s actions affect the image of his companies is perfectly valid

On 11 March, the result was clear: 94 per cent of participants answered “Definitely not” – while only three per cent answered “Yes, no problem.” However, the result changed significantly over the course of that week – and suddenly 70 per cent of participants answered “Yes, no problem.”

As t-online now writes in a report published as ‘In eigener Sache’ (on our behalf), the number of article views did not match the number of survey participants. “Initial in-house research now shows that 253,000 of the votes cast came from just two IP addresses in the US. It suggests that the survey could have been manipulated,” writes t-online.

It later became clear that the link to the article containing the poll had been “shared thousands of times on X and other social networks” – including by Elon Musk himself. “Musk’s post received 2.8 million views on X within the first two hours. Views of the poll have increased noticeably again since then,” writes t-online. However, the decisive factor in the decision to stop the survey was probably not the votes from the US via the regular channels, but the 253,000 votes from just two IP addresses.

The topic of cars repeatedly polarises opinion on the internet. Last May, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party had to stop a poll on the phase-out of combustion engines after only a few hours – due to “massive manipulation,” as the party stated. In this case, too, there were calls organised via social media to vote against the abolition of the combustion engine ban. According to the CDU, however, tens of thousands of votes were also cast automatically – as in the current Tesla case.

t-online.de (in German)