Correlations of social media performance and electoral results in Brazilian presidential elections

Abstract

The use of social media (SM) in modern political activities has reshaped how politicians run electoral campaigns. This study aims to improve the understanding of online campaigns and their correlation with electoral results. We focus on the 2018 Brazilian presidential campaign, which is well known for its strong online presence, and analyze how candidates used their SM profiles, as well as how citizens interacted with them. We propose a new set of metrics for modeling SM performance and identify statistical correlations between SM performance and votes received. For this, we analyzed more than 40,000 posts made by the 13 candidates on Brazil’s three major social networks (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) from January to October 2018. Results indicate that candidates used SM heavily throughout the year but focused on engaging words and avoided contentious topics. The most voted-for candidate received more than half (55%) of the interactions received by all the candidates. Posts’ interactions were highest on Instagram, where users were increasing the attention given to political content. Lastly, we found strong correlations between the proposed metrics and votes received. Thus, proposed metrics may support new models for predicting electoral results using combined data from many social networks.