This is a research project I conducted as part of my internship at MSL India. Please feel free to comment and critique.

1. Impact of Social Media on
Voting Behavior
A Whitepaper
24/5/2013
This whitepaper presents the findings of an online research conducted to probe and identify social
media behaviours that may influence voting preferences and choices of individuals in real world
parliamentary elections.
Shoeb Ahmed Khan
Intern – MSL India

2. Overview
Social Media has undoubtedly carved a place for itself in the lives of people. It cuts across
boundaries of geography, demography, language and subject. There have been countless
examples of movements, protests and discussions online that have resulted in the toppling of
governments, downfall of brands and celebrity meltdowns. Even companies now allocate
budgets to monitor online conversations about their brand and leverage them to improve their
products, customer service and build a positive vibe and recall.
Over the last year we have seen a number of trends online that may well affect the outcome
of the elections due to be held in 2014. Be it the NaMo v/s Feku episode or the outcry over
the arrest of two women for tweeting about Bal Thackeray, India is increasingly taking to
social media to voice its opinion. Politicians and political parties have identified this trend too
and have started developing their social media presence, but are they doing it right? A recent
study said that most of the political opinion online is pro-BJP as they have spent considerable
time and effort in building their voice on social media.
In 2012 the Prime Minister’s office took to Twitter and started tweeting with the handle
@PMOIndia. Narendra Modi is the most followed politician on Twitter followed by Sushma
Swaraj, Arvind Kejriwal etc. This is still a relatively new phenomenon to India as politicians
in US and Europe have long been using social media as a platform to generate support and
present their views. The 2008 US presidential election was widely hailed as the Social Media
Election as Barack Obama’s highly effective online campaign consisting of social media,
podcasts, mobile messaging etc. led to a landmark victory.
In this whitepaper I present the findings of a research conducted online to probe factors that
may affect voting behaviour and to gather insights into the decision making process of a
voter.

3. Introduction
At the end of 2012, it was estimated that India had more than 150 million internet users,
which is the same as the number of television sets in the country. Of this, 65 million are
Facebook users and Twitter has an estimated 35 million accounts. A study done by Pew
Research says nearly 45% of Indian web users connect on social media to discuss politics (1)
.
So while internet penetration is small (10%), the number of users is rapidly growing and is
dominated by first time voters. Between 2004 and 2009, the voting population went up from
670 million to 720 million. The number is expected to increase to 800 million by the time the
country goes to the polls, a greater number of voters than ever before will be 25 years or
younger (2)
. With elections slated for next year, it's a huge vote bank that politicians can't
afford to ignore.
The Internet and Mobile Association of India’s latest report predicts social media users will
influence the elections in 160 “high impact” constituencies out of the total of 543
constituencies in the next general election. High-impact constituencies are those where the
number of Facebook users is more than the margin of victory of the winner in the last
election, or where Facebook users account for over 10% of total voters in a constituency.
Another IAMAI report also states that social media usage is spreading fast in areas other than
the top eight Indian metros. One third of the social media users, as the study reveals, are
residents of smaller towns with population fewer than 500000. Even more significant is the
fact that a quarter of social media users are residents of towns with a population less than
200000 (2)
.
There are mixed views among politicians about social media’s impact. In an interaction
organised by Google in the capital a few weeks ago, politicians active on social media had
expressed their scepticism at the ability of the medium to influence elections. Both Minister
of State Shashi Tharoor and Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who have
large followings on Twitter, said that with net penetration of less than 12 per cent, no serious
politician can mount a significant poll campaign based on social media, let alone win an
election (3)
In Malaysia where traditional media is predominantly state-owned, the Internet is emerging
as a new political battleground where alternative online news websites are shaping opinions
of the youth who are increasingly taking to social media to gather information on political
parties before they go out to vote (4)
. Back home in Bihar and Maharashtra politicians are
increasingly logging on to Twitter to lure the youth. Nitish Kumar, Ramvilas Paswan, MNS,
Shiv Sena and the NCP all have developed an online presence (5)

4. Current Scenario
An analysis of the social media presence of the two biggest political units in India –
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the ruling party Indian National Congress (Congress)
showed the following results
Share of Voice
(1/04/2013 - 20/5/2013)
BJP
Congress
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
Tweets Retweets All Tweets
#bjp
#congress
0
1000000
2000000
3000000
4000000
5000000
6000000
7000000
#bjp #congress
Impressions
#bjp
#congress

5. BJP’s online presence consists of an official website (www.bjp.org) and a sister website
(www.yuva4india.tv) which is their internet TV portal. It is well represented on Facebook
(917k likes), Twitter (34k followers) and YouTube. The presence of high profile politicians
such as Narendra Modi, Sushma Swaraj, Vijay Goel, Rajnath Singh on Twitter futher
amplifies BJP’s reach on social media.
The Facebook page of BJP has a good mix of content ranging from photos, videos, links to
news articles and posts that are conversational and engaging in nature and relate to current
issues. The posts also contains links to their other online properties and accounts. The Twitter
account though just reflects the content on the Facebook page along with retweets from the
sister account Yuva TV. The frequency of tweets is about 2 tweets per day.
This is in stark contrast to the Indian National Congress which is almost non-existent on
social media apart from the politicians who have active accounts on Twitter. These include
S.M Krishna, Milind Deora, Ajay Maken, Digvijaya Singh etc. What is noticeable is that fact
that regardless of their non presence on social media officially, Congress was still being
talked about in contexts of governance, policies and a range of other current issues but
despite them being the ruling party, their share of voice was lesser than the BJP.
The recent war of hashtags between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi that broke out over
Twitter and then made news on TV and newspapers is a good indication of how online chatter
influences the perceptions of a politician in public eye.
Research Questions
Building on the basic premise that social media has some sort of influence on an individual’s
decision to vote, the next step was to identify the impact each online medium.
RQ1: Does an individual’s social media activity impact his likelihood to vote?
RQ2: What is the impact of different factors on this decision?
Research Methodology
A survey in the form of an online questionnaire was circulated and 187 reponses were
obtained. The survey period lasted about 4 weeks. 48% of the respondents fell in the age
bracket of 24-30, 43% under 18-23, and 7% under 31-40. There was almost an even split
among genders as 52% respondents were men and 48% women. Majority of the respondents
were graduate and post graduate students (68.8%) while the rest were full time employees
with organizations.
Facebook was used by the most number of people (50%) followed by Twitter (27%), Blogs
(12%) and Forums (10%).
60% of the respondents had voted at least once while the rest had never voted in any kind of
election

6. Measures
A set of 11 variables were identified to measure the possible ways in which an individual
could engage in political-related activities. These were measured on a 5-point likert scale.
A set of 7 questions were created to probe the amount of influence different online media had
on an individual’s voting decision. These were measure on a 5-point likert scale.
Finally, respondents were asked to rank all sources of political information in decreasing
order of influence on decision to vote.
Results
Factor Analysis was conducted on the 11 variables to reduce the number of dimensions and
get a clearer picture of data for use in further analysis. Factor Analysis resulted in a 5 factor
solution.
Component
1 2 3 4 5
Facebook
Opinions
.823
Facebook
Content Writing
.800
Facebook
Groups
.726
Forums and
Boards
.600
Twitter Follow .874
Twitter Trends .787
Twitter
Retweets
.764
News Websites .895
Reading Blogs .642
YouTube .894
Write Blog .886
The five factors were labelled as:
1. Online opinions of the general public
2. Opinions of the twitterati
3. Journalistic Reports
4. YouTube Videos
5. Content Creation
Hence we find that these emerged as the five major factors that shape an individuals political
opinion and ultimately their decision to vote.

7. The factor scores of the above 5 factors were measured. A linear regression was then run
using these 5 factors as independent variables and ‘Likelihood to vote’ as the dependent
variable.
Model Summary
Model R R Square
Adjusted R
Square
Std. Error of the
Estimate
1 .299
a
.090 .061 1.256
As seen above, the R square value of 9% indicates that the model does not explain the
variation in Likelihood to Vote. Hence we can conclude that there is no significant
correlation between the five factors and Likelihood to vote.
On being asked to arrange different forms of media in decreasing order of their impact on
voting decisions, the following was obtained
1. Television, Newpapers and Magazines
2. Radio
3. News Websites
4. Facebook
5. Twitter
6. Blogs
7. Forums and Boards
8. Official Websites
Insights
The study found that an individual’s social media activities had no significant correlation
with their likelihood to vote. Coupled with the fact that Television, Newspapers and
Magazines were chosen as the media that most impacted the decision to vote we can
conclude that the traditional forms of media still play an undeniably important role in shaping
the political opinion of the public.
Despite being outranked by traditional forms of media, it is clear that content on social media
does impact voting decisions in some way or the other.
It was also observed that any kind of advertising (online of offline) has no influence on an
individuals political opinion.
Online chatter by the general public on platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Forums has an
influence on an individuals political opinion more than content shared by official accounts of
political parties and politicians.

8. Recommendations
1. Social Media should be an important component of a 360 degree election campaign.
More than just maintaining presence on social media, it should be monitored to
identify what political topics people are talking about and in what context are parties
and politicians being mentioned.
2. Sentiment analysis on topics and keywords would be able to give deeper insights into
what issues politicians should make a stand on and talk about.
3. The research revealed that even though the public does not trust official channels of
communication they would still like to be able to find their local politican on social
media to be able to voice their issues and make themselves heard. Just like brands on
social media, it makes sense for politicians and parties to address citizens’ queries on
matters of importance. It is hence an important medium of propagating your mandate
to the general public.
4. Blue State Digital is a USA based digital agency that carried out Obama’s highly
succesful relection campaign in 2012. They raised $690 million in donations with
4.4M donors. This was achieved through commnity-building, engagement and
mobilization program tied in with the offline activities. They created a visual identity
for the campaign - Logos, videos, a website, emails, and social media presence.
What this means for MSL India:
Social Hive should see this as a possible area to explore in order to differentiate itself
from other agencies. By pitching to the right clients whose philosophy matches with
that of MSL Group, Social Hive could be amongst the first social media agencies to
drive a succesful election campaign in India. It would also establish Social Hive as the
go-to agency for running election campaigns. It would also help in creating
transparency and accountability for politicians as every move of theirs is tracked by
the voters online. It would also undoubtedly increase awareness amongst people about
political topics and issues of governance.

9. Appendix
Questionnaire
1. What is your age?
18-23
24-30
31-40
41-50
50+
2. What is your gender?
Male
Female
3. What is your education level?
High School
Undergraduate
Graduate
Post Graduate
4. What is your occupation status?
Entrepreneur
Full-time Employee
Student / Intern
5. Which of the following social platforms are you active on?
Facebook
Twitter
Forums
Blogs
6. Have you ever voted? (Municipal or Assembly or Lok Sabha)
Yes
No
7. Please indicate below your likelihood to vote in the next elections (Municipal
or Assembly or Lok Sabha)
Very Unlikely Unlikely Neutral Likely Very likely
Likelihood to vote

10. 8. For each question below, check the box that most represents your level of
agreement
Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly
Disagree
I actively engage in political
discussions by expressing my
opinions on Facebook (on my
wall, groups, pages etc)
I follow a lot of pages and groups
on Facebook that discuss
politics
I write and share political content
on Facebook
I follow and regularly read tweets
of politicians and political parties
I tweet and retweet political
content on Twitter
I read up on political topics that
are trending on twitter
I read a lot of political blogs
I blog about political topics that
interest me
I read a lot of opinion pieces
about politics on news websites
I watch videos on YouTube
related to politics
I discuss politics on various
forums and boards
9. For each question below, check the box that most represents your level of
agreement:
Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly
Disagree
I might be influenced to vote for
a particular politician based on
the content I read about him/her
on Twitter
I might be influenced to vote for
a particular politician based on

11. the content I read about him/her
on Facebook
The content on official Facebook
and Twitter accounts of
politicians and parties is more
important than what the general
public is saying about them
YouTube videos are an
important source of information
to me and affect my decision to
vote
The conversations on forums
influence my decision to vote
Online polls influence my
decision to vote
Online banner ads and other
forms of advertising influence my
voting behaviour
10. Arrange the following choices in decreasing order of their influence on
your decision to vote.
 Television
 Radio
 Facebook
 Newspapers/Magazines
 Twitter
 Blogs
 Forums
 News Websites
 Official Websites of political parties and politicians

12. References
(1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21831185
(2)http://www.iamai.in/Upload/Research/41120136250202/Social%20Media%20&%20Lok
%20Sabha%20Elections_69.pdf
(3) http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/80-million-social-media-users-by-next-
elections/article4607051.ece
(4) http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/130503/malaysia-elections
(5) http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-03-28/news/38099816_1_ncp-and-
mns-social-media-state-ncp
http://lighthouseinsights.in/political-parties-of-bihar-are-logging-onto-social-media-but-is-it-
effective.html