German officials are investigating how broadly accurate results of the country's election appeared on micro-blogging website Twitter before polling stations closed.
Dozens of short messages appeared on the site before voting ended at 6pm yesterday, many of which had data very close to the scores revealed by the official exit polls.
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.
Those breaking this law face fines of up to €50,000. In extreme cases, premature exit poll results could lead to legal challenges against the election result.
Although several tweets had figures that corresponded closely to the final results, others were way off the mark.
A spokesman for the federal election commission said a special team had been formed to ascertain whether actual figures obtained from pollsters were leaked.
But experts were divided as to how much influence a premature publication of exit poll data could have.
'We need to act energetically against people that publish actual results,' constitutional lawyer Joerg Ipsen, from the University of Osnabrueck, said.
'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. 'I think this door can no longer be closed,' she said. 'I reckon that voters are mature enough to handle pre-published results,' she said.
German politicians were enraged in late August when exit polls for state elections were leaked early on Twitter before voting ended.
At the time, the deputy parliamentary head of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, Wolfgang Bosbach, said the leaking of the results 'damaged democracy'.
Official results showed Ms Merkel's party clinch 33.8% and her partners the Free Democrats on 14.6%, handing her preferred centre-right coalition a clear mandate.
Her rival centre-left Social Democrats registered what their candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier decried as a 'bitter defeat' with 23%.
The far-left Linke scored 11.9% and the Greens 10.7%.
