Abstract

Does the Strength of Social Media presence affect the vote share in U.S. House elections? Research suggests that social media has greatly impacted campaign strategy by creating a way for candidates to bypass traditional media and have direct, one-way communication with their constituents (Hendericks and Schill 2017; Jungherr 2016; Panagopoulos 2016). The impact of social media in elections, however, is greatly contested. Some scholars have attempted to use social media to predict elections, finding correlations rather than causation. Some have found that social media like Twitter likely did have limited effects on elections, lowering the vote-share for Republicans (Fujiwara, Müller, and Schwarz 2021). A Candidate’s gender could affect social media’s impact on elections as high-profile female candidates are targeted more severely online by uncivil messages than male candidates (Rheault, Rayment, and Musulan 2019). However, minimal research has been done to measure the effects of candidate run social media accounts and vote-share. I used an existing data set for house elections from Sorensen and Chen's (2022) research and built my own measure of social media following to test whether social media presence impacts vote share when controlling for various electoral factors. Using ordinary least squares regression, I found support for the idea that candidate follower count is positively associated with vote share and that follower count is negatively associated with vote share for highly visible female candidates.

Advisor

Sorensen, Ashley

Department

Political Science

Disciplines

American Politics | Political Science

Keywords

Social media, elections, campaigns, politics, House congressional elections, 2020 election, candidates

Publication Date

2024

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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