{"id":12059,"date":"2014-05-28T13:59:19","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T12:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sotrender.com\/?p=12059"},"modified":"2015-12-01T22:02:47","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T21:02:47","slug":"european-parliament-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/european-parliament-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"European Parliament Elections: Facebook fans vs. reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is getting more and more common that both politicians and political parties\u00a0use social media to run campaigns before the\u00a0European Parliament Elections. It is though hard to say how their\u00a0efforts convert into the actual results and support. Before the European Parliament Election we checked how the candidate parties are doing on Facebook<\/a>. Three days after the end of four-day vote, the official results from most of the countries were\u00a0announced. Sotrender <\/a>checked whether there is\u00a0a\u00a0relationship between interest on Facebook (measured as number of fans) and the actual results of the elections.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Basing on the performance of \u00a0national parties from the six biggest european countries (only five victorious parties presented on graphs) and additional analysis of Maltese parties performance, which intrigued us during previous analysis<\/a>, we conclude that …<\/p>\n

The results of the European Parliament Elections\u00a0are unpredictable – especially if the predictions are based on Facebook fans data.<\/strong> Among analysed countries, there were ones with very strong\u00a0relationship between number of fans and parties actual results, as well as those with\u00a0the direction of relationship \u00a0just the opposite to what could be expected.<\/p>\n

\"European<\/a>

European Parliament Elections – Countries under examination<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Winners on Facebook win the\u00a0European Parliament Elections<\/h2>\n

The strongest positive relationship between Facebook performance of a party and the results it scored during the European Parliament Elections\u00a0can be seen in case of:<\/p>\n

1. Malta<\/strong><\/p>\n

2. France<\/strong><\/p>\n

3. United Kingdom<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike the\u00a0case of Malta where the results of general election held in March were almost the same as those of the EU Parliament – 1st place Malta Labour Party<\/a>, 2nd place Nationalist Party<\/a> and 3rd place Democratic Alternative<\/a>, the results obtained\u00a0during the Election in France and UK were \u00a0unproportionate to the number of fans the parties had on Facebook.<\/p>\n

French National Front<\/a>, which won the Election by less than 5% of votes in the Hexagone, attracted\u00a0almost twice as much users as the second\u00a0(Union for a Popular Movement<\/a>) and third (Socialist Party<\/a> – Radical Party of the Left<\/a>) parties. Fourth place was occupied by the coalition of Union\u00a0of Democrats and Independents<\/a>\u00a0and Democratic Mouvement<\/a>, whose total number of fans reached only 0.01% of country’s population.\u00a0The Greens<\/a>\u00a0placed as fifth.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"European<\/a>

Winning parties – France<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"European<\/a>

Winning parties – Malta<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

When it comes to the UK, top 3 parties are\u00a0approximate in the number of Facebook fans, however, the relationship is invert – the worse place the party is ranked, the more fans it has.<\/strong> What’s interesting, although the Conservative Party<\/a>‘s support in the Elections was more than threefold lower than Independence<\/a> and Labour Parties<\/a>‘ results, on Facebook it had more fans than each French, Maltese and English party.<\/p>\n

\"European<\/a>

Winning parties – United Kingdom<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Outliers and peculiarities<\/h2>\n

Low or almost no relationship may be recorded in cases of Italy, Spain and Germany. Obviously, Italy’s balance was upset by Five Star Movement<\/a>, which reached more than 400k fans on Facebook, much more than other parties from the ranking below (Democratic Party<\/a>, \u00a0Forza Italia<\/a>, Lega Nord<\/a> and the coalition of New Centre-Right<\/a>, Union of the Democratic Centre and Popolari per l’Italia<\/a>), which altogether reached only 256k fans! This makes Five Star Movement the most popular european political party on Facebook<\/a>.<\/strong> Congrats!<\/p>\n

\"Politics<\/a>

Winning parties – Italy<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Similar situation may be observed in case of Spanish top five – with nearly twice as much fans as People’s Party<\/a>, Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party<\/a>, \u00a0\u00a0United Left <\/a>and Union, Progress and Democracy<\/a>\u00a0combined, \u00a0For Social Democracy party (Podemos)<\/a>\u00a0routed the competition on Facebook. Despite social media success, it\u00a0came barely fourth in the election race.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"European<\/a>

Winning parties – Spain<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The case of Germany is also specific, especially taking under consideration top five political parties that got seats in the European Parliament. For\u00a0top three parties the situation doesn’t raise doubts – worse place and less fans go together. \u00a0It came out, however, that from fourth place the more fans on Facebook the party had, \u00a0the more seldom it was chosen during the Elections. It’s worth mentioning that\u00a0sister parties’\u00a0Christian Democratic Union of Germany<\/a> and Christian Social Union of Bavaria<\/a>\u00a0profiles (ranked first) have in total\u00a0less\u00a0fans than the Facebook profile of Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland <\/a>(ranked fifth).\u00a0<\/strong>Moreover, some parties that didn’t qualify for\u00a0top five, like Piratenpartei<\/a>, Die PARTEI<\/a> or Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands<\/a>, do very well on social media services<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"European<\/a>

Winning parties – Germany<\/p><\/div>\n

Women without a right to vote? If only Facebook fans matter…<\/h2>\n

And the winner in recording the most peculiar relationship between\u00a0support in elections and support on Facebook is… Poland<\/strong> – the only country with negative\u00a0Pearson correlation coefficient (r = -0.17), which means that the increase in results obtained during elections entails the decrease in number of Facebook fans<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This phenomenon however, has it’s explanation: these were the most controversial political parties, like Kongres Nowej Prawicy<\/a>\u00a0(whose leader claims for instance that \u00a0women should not have the right to vote<\/a>), who tend to interest Polish Facebook users the most.\u00a0So maybe Facebook is not a place where people show their support, but just search for the entertainment? Or is it\u00a0just the opposite – are they driven by the compulsive need to show publicly their support or dissaproval?<\/p>\n

\"European<\/a>

Winning parties – Poland<\/p><\/div>\n

Data source<\/h2>\n

Facebook data comes\u00a0directly from Facebook API, status as at 26th of May 2014.\u00a0Results of the 2014 European Parliament Elections\u00a0after\u00a0official European Parliament webpage<\/a> (exception: Poland, source: official webpage of National Electoral Commission<\/a>), status as at\u00a026th of May 2014. The countries were divided by strength and direction of the relationship on the basis of Pearson correlation coefficient, calculated for political parties enumerated on European Parliament official results webpage in ‘Results by country’ bookmark.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is getting more and more common that both politicians and political parties\u00a0use social media to run campaigns before the\u00a0European Parliament Elections. It is though hard to say how their\u00a0efforts convert into the actual results and support. Before the European Parliament Election we checked how the candidate parties are doing on Facebook. Three days after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1779,1783],"tags":[17,385,715,829,831,833],"yoast_head":"\nEuropean Parliament Elections: Facebook fans vs. reality<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sotrender checked whether there is a relationship between the number of parties' fans on Facebook and the results of the European Parliament Elections.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sotrender.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/european-parliament-elections\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"European Parliament Elections: Facebook fans vs. reality\" 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