Social Media Could Determine The Outcome Of The 2020 Election

The importance of social media in this year’s Presidential race cannot be overstated. Currently 72% of U.S. citizens of voting age actively use some form of social media, while 69% of Americans in the same group use Facebook alone, according to data from Socialbakes. The social media marketing platform found that while President Donald Trump’s use of Twitter has been widely acknowledged, and certainly had a tremendous impact on the outcome of the 2016 elections, former Vice President Joe Biden has actually surpassed the President in many key engagement metrics.

Moreover, while President Trump has some 87 million followers on Twitter to Vice President Biden’s 11 million followers, both candidates have seen a massive and continuous increase in engagement during this election cycle.

Additionally, the Socialbakes data found that Biden’s three highest performing tweets have nearly double the amount of interactions compared to Trump’s respective tweets, despite Biden’s drastically lower follower count – another testament to the irrelevance of follower count on a stage this large.

In the lead up to and just following last Thursday’s debate between the two candidates, social media users spent a lot of time discussing the candidates. Data from Hootsuite, showed that from Oct. 21 to Oct. 23 there were 6.6 million total mentions of Trump and Biden, with Biden owning 72% of those mentions.

During the actual debate, mentions for Biden spiked up to 511,000 with a sentiment breakdown of 14% positive, 38% neutral, 48% negative – while mentions for Trump spiked up during the debate to 244K with a sentiment breakdown of 10% positive, 41% neutral, and 49% negative.

Reaching The Youth Vote

An extremely important consideration with social media during this election cycle is how it can reach the youth vote, which could certainly determine the outcome of the election like never before, according to additional insight from Study.com experts.

While many students of an age too young to vote – more than a third of those in grades seven to 12 often learn the most about an election from their teachers, followed by 20% whose political views are shaped on social media. That is notable because many voting age young adults today have been using social media most of their lives.

Even before those individuals could cast a vote, their world view of the candidates was already being shaped on Instagram and TikTok.

“Social media’s influence on the election is widely known, and Study.com’s survey revealed that teachers also have an instrumental role in informing younger generations about the election process,” explained Brooke Gabbert, strategist at Study.com.

“The combination of these two influences arm students with the information to learn about democracy and navigate one of our most important civic duties,” she added.

The Influencer Perspective: Themed Accounts

Outside of the classroom many students, including those now of voting age, have been among the first generation to largely follow “influencers,” who can only not shape views on brands and products but also on political candidates. Viral Nation, an influencer marketing agency that represents a number of major brands, has considered the candidates in terms of social media influencers, and how Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden have connected with users on social media.

“Much like beauty, influence is only skin deep these days and not everything is as it seems in examining the accounts driving the current election,” said Jonathan Chanti, executive vice president at Viral Nation.

“Accountability plays a huge role, or should, to content creators but when looking at accounts driving this election, themed accounts – those that don’t have a figure behind them but instead focus on content, have played a huge role, especially for Trump,” added Chanti.

Trump-branded content has five times the reach of Biden-branded content via social publishers, but in this election cycle that might not be enough for the President to win a second term.

“Themed accounts are great vehicles to raise awareness about issues that are most important to voters, however there’s a lack of accountability since there’s no face behind the content, eliminating any backlash making them more dangerous in terms of validity,” noted Chanti. “With technology like Influsoft (marketing platform), these key findings and other insights allow brands and in this case candidates align with the right influencers which will absolutely become more important as we’re seeing their voices being leveraged more and more in politics.”

Tip Of The Iceberg

Influencers are not new to this election cycle, but in just the last few years their “influence” has increased considerably and these social media power users could be a true wild card this year.

“We have never seen an election to date that has relied so heavily on influencers to reach audiences and we at Viral Nation believe this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Joe Gagliese, co-founder & CEO of Viral Nation.

“With so much at stake for so many, we’re seeing everyone from celebrities to traditional influencers speak out, unsolicited or paid, but we expect to see this trend grow with influencers playing a much more strategic part in elections in the future,” Gagliese added. “Generally, influencers are younger and therefore tend to swing left in support of Biden and those who don’t, we won’t see them speak on it due to the extreme polarizing nature of this election and potential impact on their business and brand deals.”

It is also true that former President Barrack Obama may have been the first candidate to truly embrace social media, but Trump quickly adopted it and also used it to his advantage. As noted, no politician has relied so heavily on Twitter to spread a message, and that shouldn’t be overlooked running up to next week’s Election Day.

Social media could be the way that the candidates connect with those crucial undecided voters – especially since Covid-19 has limited the ability to hold the usual campaign stops.

“There’s a lot on the line here,” said Gagliese, “but the true impact can be seen in the numbers and smart candidates and their teams will be integrating influencers as a key part of their marketing mix in the future.”