Since the dawn of democracy, politicians have aimed to reach as many voters as possible in order to get their messages across. This has always involved trekking around the country, shaking hands, and kissing babies, but nowadays social media has become an essential part of the election equation.
It’s no secret that the younger generation is the most active demographic in social media sphere, which means this space presents a ripe opportunity for candidates to court the ever elusive Young Voter.
Quickly after Newt Gingrich entered his name into the GOP primary, much attention was given to his Twitter following, which was much larger than that of his competitors. After examining the actual make up of his following, however, researchers found that any suggestion that Gingrich was the most popular candidate was probably misleading due to a variety of factors.
First of all, studies revealed that nearly half of all Newt Gingrich’s followers are from outside the US. That would be great if Gingrich’s chief goal was achieving celebrity, but because none of these followers can actually cast a vote in the election, they are actually worthless to his cause.
Secondly, it would be misleading to assume that Gingrich is getting his message across to all of his 1.2 million followers. Only half of all Twitter accounts are actually active (defined as an account that logs on at least once a month). In other words, half of Gingrich’s followers never read any of the messages he publishes to his account.
Obviously, such revelations demonstrate that when trying to monitor social media accounts of political figures, a large following does not necessarily suggest popularity or indicate an increased likelihood to receive more votes. Gingrich’s poor performance in the Iowa caucuses certainly supports this conclusion.
Another factor which suggests that social media popularity is a poor predictor of political success is found when examining the Facebook fans of the GOP candidates. Mitt Romney has a staggering 1.2 million more Facebook fans than Rick Santorum, but Romney only beat Santorum by 8 votes in the Iowa caucuses. Santorum’s 64,000 fans pale in comparison to Ron Paul (700,000), Newt Gingrich (220,000) and Rick Perry (180,000), but Santorum still easily out-performed them in Iowa.
Of course, this is not to say that social media is a poor way to communicate with potential voters; it’s still an excellent way to keep followers engaged with your message. But these figures show that despite the suggestion of popularity given by having a large following, social media fans only demonstrate public intrigue with a candidate, and not whether they’ll actually vote for them at the polls.
