Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

The Facebook vote

by Aaron Wherry on Friday, November 5, 2010 10:03am - 0 Comments

Simply comparing Facebook fan counts would have been an accurate predictor of the winner in 74% of House races and 81% of Senate races in the United States this week.

For whatever it is thus worth, our federal leaders presently rank as follows.

Stephen Harper. 36,611
Michael Ignatieff. 32,676
Jack Layton. 31,093
Elizabeth May. 7,172
Gilles Duceppe. 4,885

Possibly of note: Justin Trudeau has some 26,000 fans.

Tags: Elizabeth May, facebook, Gilles Duceppe, Jack Layton, Justin Trudeau, Michael Ignatieff, Stephen Harper

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Style

Hmm, so if Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton were running in the same riding, it would be a tight race. Fascinating.

Mike T.

The onion ring would take it ina landslide.

Dave

Onion Ring 2011

gottabesaid

And Justin Bieber has 14,645,894 Facebook fans… y'know, for what it's worth.
Lord Kitchener's Own

Of course, by this logic, I'm pretty sure we should be appointing Justin Bieber King for life.

Also, as has been pointed out, the onion ring that was attempting to get more fans than Stephen Harper now has over 160,000 fans.

gottabesaid

I could see appointing Bieber King for, say, a decade… but not for life. That's just stupid. The onion ring could be vice-regent. Delicious!

AJR79

If the Liberals are smart (which I'm sure they're not) they will look to LeBlanc for generational change, and stay away from Trudeau like the plague.

The guy is underwhelming to say the least. The higher profile he is, the better it will be for the CPC.
PeteTong

Sometimes I add politicians on facebook so I can post links to embarrasing things they have done…

"For whatever it is thus worth" I'm genuine fan on facebook of Joannie Rochette and the tv show battlestar galactica.
Reverend_Blair

Wouldn't the higher friend count on Facebook mostly be an indication of a better-run campaign by a more popular politician? It would really only make sense that the winners would have a higher Facebook Friend count in most cases. I wouldn't consider it scientific, but I would expect some sort of correlation.

ajb

I suspect that the friend count is probably more useful in more local races as a result — the Tories, Liberals and NDP are all well enough organized to get tens of thousands of friends up, but a poorly-organized challenger (or lazy incumbent) in a House of Representatives seat is less likely to win than an well-organized candidate.
Naheed Nenshi has over 16000 Facebook friends, which in his case was definitely a sign…

tobyornotoby

What a revelation! We have discovered that elections, like Facebook friend counts, are a shallow popularity contest.
psiclone

Harper out in front and Iggy and Jack nose to nose eh? interesting
sourstud

A very interesting metric Wherry! However, for a slightly larger sample size, let's compare Twitter followers:

Harper: 71,014 followers
Iggy: 48,673 followers
Layton: 46,164 followers
Duceppe: 35,687 followers (!?!?!)
May: 9,277 followers

Justin Trudeau: 38,011

So there is an interesting gap between Twitter and Facebook results. Either way though, the Libs and NDP are pretty much neck and neck.

Also, the Twitter community is apparently WAAAAAAY more politically engaged than Facebook users. Twitter has ~20% of the user base that Facebook does, yet almost 2x as many political "followers". That would make the average Twitter user almost 10x more likely to be following politics than the average Facebook user. Take note campaign managers!

Now, +1 point for whoever goes out and finds the same numbers for Friendster and MySpace :)

LdKitchenersOwn

Twitter has ~20% of the user base that Facebook does, yet almost 2x as many political "followers". That would make the average Twitter user almost 10x more likely to be following politics than the average Facebook user.

I think your logic is flawed here. Liking someone on FB is very different from following someone on Twitter so I'm not sure that the comparison is even meaningful in any way. Saying "I want to follow what person X is doing" is a MUCH lower bar than "I want to advertise my appreciation for person X". I don't necessarily disagree that Twitter followers might be much more politically engaged, but that's a function, imho, of the difference in the type of tool that Twitter is, and I don't think it can be established from your numbers here. I think all your numbers really say is that people are much more likely to want to follow what a politician is doing, than they are to actually like a politician, but that's hardly surprising. I may well "follow" Hurricane Tomas on Twitter to get updates on where it is, and what its strength is, but there's no way I'm going to "Like" the hurricane on Facebook as it rips through Haiti.

sourstud

I'm afraid that there is probably some truth to what you're saying. Though, using myself as an example actually "Like" a lot of things on Facebook that I don't really like at all. Meanwhile I refuse to follow any politicians on Twitter.

The more I think about it, I think it's a bit shocking that so many people are willing to count 140 character Tweets as information, when it's even less informative than the 30 second TV soundbites we've gotten used to in recent years. I mean, I understand that a politicians job is essentially to say nothing while appearing to say something…. but do we need to making it so much easier for them to do so?

LdKitchenersOwn

I think it's a bit shocking that so many people are willing to count 140 character Tweets as information, when it's even less informative than the 30 second TV soundbites we've gotten used to in recent years.

I think you're underestimating hyperlinks. 140 characters is just the headline and the bit.ly link; if I want the actual information, I click on the link. Now, true, politicians may mostly just be tweeting without links, but this is the sort of "tweet" I meant when I called Twitter a "news source". In a lot of ways I treat Twitter like an aggregated RSS feed, bringing all of the headlines (with links to the stories) from the NYT, Macleans, TSN, the NP, the Globe and Mail, all of my favourite columnists, professional organizations I belong to, etc… etc… together in one place, updated in real time, available wherever I am (via my Milestone). It's WAY more information than I ever had at my fingertips on the bus ride to work before!

LdKitchenersOwn

I don't know about Ducceppe, but Twitter is very much a "news source" these days, so I'm not at all shocked that many more people would follow the sitting PM than any opposition MP. I may HATE the PM (I don't hate the PM, I'm establishing a hypothetical here) so there's NO WAY I'm going to "Like" him on Facebook, but he's still the PM, so I may well still want to follow what he's saying on Twitter (BTW, how many Twitter followers does Clement have now, 'cause that guy's twitter feed is ENTERTAINING!!!).

As I said, I'm not sure I can explain Duceppe, but I think a sitting PM, even a sitting PM who was way behind in the Facebook popularity race, is almost always going to be well ahead of any opposition leader in terms of Twitter followers. Who "likes" you on FB is generally an indication of how many people actually like you, whereas who follows you on Twitter is an indication of how many people want to follow what you're doing. Even people who think the Prime Minister is terrible and is doing a horrible job are going to want to follow what he's doing on Twitter, because he's PM, and what he's doing could have a big impact on their lives, much more so than an opposition MP could.

It's a bigger sample of users, to be sure, but it's a bigger sample of users who are doing something quite different. "Liking" a politician and "following" what they're doing are two entirely different things. In fact, I might even be more likely to closely follow a politician that I don't like than I would a politician that I like, because I want to keep a close eye on the former.

sourstud

I agree entirely about the PM having a bigger soapbox, and the Like/Follow distinction. Perhaps the difference between Facebook Likers and Twitter followers could be extrapolated to guage voter turnout, if it is indeed an indicator for those who are "interested but not impressed" by certain candidates.

AJR79

I'm sure thoses 26 000 fans are all conservatives.

Gayle

Are they members of the liberal party of Canada calling for him to be the leader of the party?

hosertohoosier

74% is a terrible percentage. If you simply predicted that all incumbents would win re-election you would probably do better, even though it was a wave election. Look at electionprediction.com – they are generally on the low end of accuracy but they routinely get percentages in the 90s.

For somebody that spent the summer ragging on the Tories for introducing a census that was not representative, it is rather strange to see you looking at the same kind of tea leaves today.

LdKitchenersOwn

You're right. In this "wave election" as you call it, over 85% of incumbents won.

peter

Hoser, not to mention misunderstanding cause and effect…ie are the numbers for encumbents higher because they are encumbents and invested more time in their Facebook accounts. "Dewey Wins" comes to mind as another famous example of misplaced metrics. Since Wherry is CPC hater and seems to take great pleasure in riling the ABC gang I'm sure he grasps at any straws which validate his preconcieved notions.