With social media, political parties have a new trump card in their hands to find and retain voters. How successful have parties been in this so far? As a test, we examined the redistricting elections of 13 November in Alphen aan den Rijn, Boskoop and Rijnwoude. From 1 October, we whatsapp number list followed and analysed the election campaign. The most important question was whether unwritten election laws also apply online. We wanted to gain insight into where online conversations took place, which themes voters were concerned about and whether politicians were able to tap into what voters were experiencing.
Elections-Offline
Unwritten election law 1: attention gets votes
In general, the outcome of municipal elections is determined for about two-thirds by national politics. To illustrate, on the left the outcome of the 2012 Second Chamber elections and on the right the recent polls:
Seat distribution vs opinion poll in the House of Representatives
Does this law also apply online?
The potential for influence by local politicians is therefore relatively small, but it is enough to clean email win seats. Whoever generates the most attention has the greatest chance of winning the most votes, an old election law teaches us. In general, this concerns media attention in newspapers, do we find the aromas of maceration? on television and the radio. We asked ourselves the following question: does this law also apply online, locally? In the merged municipality of Alphen aan den Rijn, we followed the buzz about all eleven parties in the last six weeks before the elections. This concerns all messages on online media that can be found around the factions and their members. So including the messages in which people shout about themselves.