Social Media and the Midterms: Who “Likes” Whom?

Traditional ways of reaching out to voters include phone calls, knocking on doors, organized rallies and fundraisers. Modern ways of reaching out include Facebook pages, Tweets, posts and comments about candidates and issues. The challenge is that the younger demographic who are better reached by modern methods are also, statistically, less likely to vote.

Candidates are hoping to change all of that.

On October 22, Facebook unveiled a new interactive area on its Web page. It lists every gubernatorial (governor), Senate and House of Representative race in all 50 states. Users can click on a state and view a tabulation of all Likes, shares and comments for every candidate with a Facebook page. The social media company says that the intent of the election tool is not to predict winners but to reflect the level of engagement of voters with their candidates. Some critics say that Facebook is more interested in using the collected data to sell and better target advertisements.

Back in 1990, a non-profit called Rock the Vote was created by record executives as a way to encourage young people to register and vote. The 1992 Presidential election saw a 20% increase of increase in youth voter turnout. Rock the Vote has maintained its relevance by continuing to “fuse pop culture, politics and technology” as a way to mobilize young voters. Their most recent campaign is called “Care Like Crazy.”

Measuring Engagement

Because digital communication is so new, the specific ways to reach the masses changes with great regularity. But a number of tools have been created to measure and evaluate success online. Metrics is a way to collect specific data, such as website visits, donation amounts, “Likes,” Tweets, etc. Analytics, on the other hand, are used to make create insights and make predictions based on collected data. While midterm elections have historically lower voter turnout than Presidential elections, political scientists are hoping that this particular election will reveal a clearer picture than before about the role of social media in politics.

Last month, Election Central reported on high profile Senate races that could determine the fate of control of the Senate. We took a look at their stats on the Facebook interactive map and found some interesting similarities in four of the five states we profiled. In Kentucky, North Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia, the Republicans all have nearly twice as many “Likes” as their Democratic opponents. However, in four cases, the Democrats are getting twice as many “Shares” and/or comments. Whether those comments are positive or negative is difficult to determine. In Alaska, those ratios are reversed.