2010 Election and the Role of Social Media, Part Two
Posted November 4th, 2010 by Jason Douglas
Jason Douglas
Spyder Trap Online Marketing
Just like that, after months of hype, negative ads, debates and millions of votes counted, the 2010 Election has come and gone. Now, we can get into analyzing this election! Specifically, I will be focusing on the impact that social media had on this election.
The first statistic I wanted to create was the number of people who said they voted using the Facebook Vote Tracker and then compare that with the estimated voting population on Facebook.
As of 1:38AM Wednesday, November 3rd, a total of 12,278,936 people clicked ‘I Voted’ on Facebook.
As of 2:49PM on Tuesday, November 2nd, a total of 130,048,480 people, 18 years of age and older, are on Facebook.
This equates to be a voter turnout of 9.44%. There were several outside factors contributing to the shockingly low voter turnout.
First: I read on allfacebook.com, a few people commented that they closed out of the widget early on, but did not know how to make it reappear. It will never be known how many Facebook users did that, and then voted.
Second: it is likely that there were some Facebook users who did not log on to the web platform, thus, not noticing the ‘Vote Tracker’ widget.
Third: some people, including a friend of mine, openly chose not to click the ‘I Voted’ button, despite actually voting. Participation on Facebook was not mandatory.
In terms of people who voted, I calculated another interesting statistic. By taking the overall number of voters in the United States in comparison to the percentage of voters on Facebook, I found the following:
According to United States Election Project at George Mason University, voter turnout, while lower when compared to 2008, was much higher compared to Facebook users.
The site states that 235,809,266 people in the United States are of voting age, which potentially means that 55.15% of people in the United States who are of voting age are on Facebook. (130,048,480 / 235,809,266 = 55.15%)
I then looked to eliminate ineligible voters. After subtracting these ineligible voters, such as felons, non-registered voters, etc., eligible voters totaled 218,054,301.
The site states approximately 90,504,100 ballots were submitted in the United States. Divide that by the number of eligible voters: 218,054,301, and you get your voter turnout of 41.5% (90,504,100 / 218,054,301 = 41.5%).
If Facebook voter turnout equaled the national rate, a total of 53,970,119 people would have clicked on the ‘I Voted’ button.
Even if everyone that voted who is on Facebook clicked the ‘I Voted’ button, I speculate that over 40 million people did not participate for one of the reasons above.
The question that has to be asked next: “are social media users, specifically Facebook users, that disconnected with the political world?”
There’s so much one can discuss around this topic. I am going to write a bonus part three for this series next week. It appears that Facebook gave everyone in the United States a heads up about the political shift of power. I’ll show you how in part three.
Tags: 2010 election, Facebook, Social Media
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