Exploring topics that are personally relevant and interesting to young adult EFL learners remains a core challenge in language teaching. At the same time, the advent of fast-paced and informal online-communication through social media and web 2.0 applications has many repercussions for authentic language learning. The “U.S. Embassy School Election Project 2012” has addressed these questions by combining a close focus on the U.S. Presidential Election with an interactive project scenario. More than 1,500 students across Germany participated in this project and produced an election forecast for an assigned U.S. state based on a survey of regional news media and social networking platform data. Their predictions were in many cases more accurate than those of major U.S. broadcasting networks. In this talk, exemplary tasks and processes from the project will be presented and outcomes relevant for future applications discussed.