Social media campaigning and voter behavior–evidence for the German federal election 2021

Abstract

We analyze the relationship between party campaigning on social media and the voting intentions voiced by respondents in a large representative survey in the German federal election campaign in 2021. We argue that online campaigns spread through the online and offline networks of the initial recipients – thereby influencing substantial parts of the electorate. We exploit inter-temporal, inter-regional, and inter-party differences in the intensity of campaigning by parties and candidates on Facebook and Twitter. In addition, we control for the respondents' choice in the previous federal election and a number of other personal characteristics. Using a multinomial logit model with alternative-specific constants, we find the probability of a respondent's intention to vote for a party to increase in the state-specific campaigning activities on social media of this party the days before. While the literature suggests that especially populist right-wing parties will benefit from campaigning on social media, we find the marginal impact to be significantly higher for Christian democrats, Social Democrats, and Greens than for the right-wing “Alternative für Deutschland”.