Republicans vs Democrats on Social Media

During this year’s midterms, there were many people that were active on social media for political reasons. Many shared political posts advocating for a certain candidate or a bill, and many joined political campaign pages on social media. In 2010, social media was utilized in the political sphere as well. Did Republicans and Democrats use social media in the same ways or did they have different methods of using social media back in 2010?

Looking at the data, there were more people who use social media in order to get information on political candidates or campaigns. Out of 193 people polled, 22% of them used social media for this purpose. Looking at parties, 26% of Republicans who used social media used it in order to get information of political candidates and campaigns. On the other hand, 19% of Democrats who used social media used it in order to get information. This was the biggest gap between the parties as there were 39% more Republicans compared to Democrats.

The next most popular option was using social media to join a political group. Out of 194 people polled, 15% utilized social media in order to join a political group. More Democrats used social media for this purpose compared to Republicans. 16% of Democrats joined political groups on social media compared to the 14% of Republicans.

Another reason for using social media is in order to post political content. Out of 194 people, 15% of them posted political content on social media. 16% of Republicans posted political content compared to the 13% of Democrats that post political content.

All in all, more Republicans seem to have been more politically active on social media compared to Democrats. Republicans were more likely to use social media in order to get political information and post political content while Democrats were more likely to join political groups on social media.

In addition to that, Republicans had a tendency to follow pages that express similar views to them. Out of the 88 republicans polled, 50% of them said that they follow pages with content that has similar views. 45% of Democrats reported following pages with similar views. More Democrats reported following pages with neutral views compared to Republicans. 37% of Democrats followed pages with neutral views compared to the 28% of Republicans. Interestingly enough, more Republicans reported following content with different views from them. 22% of Republicans reported following content with different views compared to 18% of Democrats.

During the 2010, Twitter was also used. When asked, more Democrats reported using Twitter compared to Republicans. In total, 19% of Democrats who used social media used Twitter compared to the 10% of Republicans. However, there were very small differences between political Twitter usage by the parties. In addition to that, only a small portion of Twitter users utilized that platform for political reasons. One interesting thing is that neither parties used Twitter to follow a candidate or campaign. However, if you look at the Twitter usage in 2018, you can see that many politicians use Twitter in order to connect to their citizens. What could have caused the huge change?

Republicans and Democrats differ in their reasons for following candidates and campaigns on social media as well. More Republicans reported using social media in order to feel more personally connected to candidates as a major reason for following candidates and campaigns on social media. On the whole, Democrats reported that the reasons provided were minor reasons or not a reason at all.

Below, you can see another graph depicting the differences between parties and their reasons for following candidates. Compares to Republicans, Democrats had less major reasons and more minor reasons for following Candidates and Campaigns on Social Media.

Nowadays, political posts and pages are prevalent in social media. In 2010, political usage in social media was not as widespread as the data shows. However, Republicans and Democrats were generally the same with only minute differences. In 2018, would there be more differences? Seeing as social media has grown exponentially through the past 8 years, there must be changes to the trends.