Facebook and Elections

While number of Facebook friends and likes of candidate pages does not necessarily translate to votes, these numbers can be a good check to see a candidate's popularity and viability: Facebook outreach seems to have been a prominent factor in recent elections. Having a large number of Facebook friends is important because it increases a candidate’s ability to reach out to the student body. Candidates will typically invite all of their friends to their pages, which gives them the ability to promote themselves in a way that requires minimal effort. Also, the more friends candidates have, the more people see their status updates. This leads to more comments and likes, which show up on even more people’s news feeds. Facebook, in this way, is an easy method of campaigning to a large number of people. It gives candidates the name recognition and support they need to get votes. Since Facebook has become mainstream, the ticket with the most people in their Facebook group has won every contested election. This makes having a good Facebook page with a lot of likes absolutely vital to the candidates.

These numbers are important in the presidential election, but they are probably even more crucial in elections for senate. While the presidential candidates undertake extensive campaigning efforts to spread their names and platforms, a Facebook page is typically the only form of campaigning done by many senate candidates. They do not get their name spread across campus the same way the presidential candidates do, so the support of their friends can be the difference between winning and losing. Senators typically win their elections with around 200 votes. The highest number of votes any senate candidate had last year was 374. A large number of these votes may have come from people who were only reached by the candidates through Facebook. 

So where are the presidential candidates at compared to when formal campaigning started? Here is a breakdown:

Trevor Monnier

Current friends: 1383

Friends at beginning: 891

Beth Monnier

Current friends: 496

Friends at beginning: 470

Students for Trevor and Beth: 89 Likes

Jordan Bancroft-Smithe

Current friends: 434

Friends at beginning: 392

KaLeigh White

Current friends: 346

Friends at beginning: 294

Jordan and KaLeigh for UNI Students: 151 Likes

Kyle Burns

Current friends: 829

Friends at beginning: 785

Brendan Thompson

Current friends: 727

Friends at beginning: 697

Students for Kyle & Brendan: 227 Likes

Based on page likes, it looks like Kyle and Brendan are the current front runners. I am actually surprised by the friend counts, though; most of the candidates have only had modest increases in friend totals. Trevor, however, has experienced an explosion in friends over the last week, increasing his total by an astonishing 492. This has been the typical trend in previous years, and I was expecting most of the candidates to have large increases in number of friends. Campaigning is still far from over, though, and I expect the number of likes and friends will continue increasing as the process goes on.