Do Social Media Help Win Elections?

Abstract

So far we have focused on which candidates and parties adopted and made professional use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook. We examined to what extent social media level the playing field and found that social media allow postmaterialist parties to communicate as if they were bigger parties. We also found that some candidates fully exploit the opportunities of social media while others do not. Especially female politicians seem to do well. But does such a (partially) leveled playing field also yield electoral benefits? Do social media merely change the communicative power balance, not the electoral one? If so, that would significantly undermine the equalization argument. Indeed as Gibson and McAllister (2014:2) rightly observe, “if smaller parties are capitalizing on their digital campaign efforts but not gaining any inroads into popular support, then it becomes difficult to see how this is leading to a rebalancing of power within the system.”