Political campaign success predictors from social media financing

Abstract

Social media advertising has become an integral part of most political campaigns. This study investigates the funding and social media strategies adopted by politicians in the 2019 European Parliament Elections. We aggregate data across an EU member state, Malta, with a voting population of 330,000. This allows us to sample the entire candidate population (n=41) to identify the strategy-variances and crowd behaviour. We then compare and contrast pre-election crowd behaviour with post-election outcome. Results are based on 84,320 data points that include 1) individual candidate advertising spend, 2) content submitted by candidates, 3) user generated content, 4) user interaction across multiple dimensions, and 5) actual voting results. Results show that pre-election social media engagement is indicative of campaign success. Pre-election engagement is also related to campaign effectiveness based on lower cost per vote conversion. We also note that while spending more in Facebook™ advertising alone does not necessarily improve the candidate’s likelihood of getting elected, however, the advertising cost conversion seems to have a significant influence on results. This suggests that the campaign’s strategic efficiency is a key determinant of success.