The most recent Ontario election has left me wondering whether or not the results were impacted by the activities of the candidates on Social Media. With that, I decided to take a look at 3 races where an underdog came up to take the win in a close race. This will hopefully give us an idea as to whether social media may have had a positive influence on voters. Through these 3 races, I’ve tabled the social score of Facebook fans/friends + Twitter Klout score in order to establish which candidate is interacting more effectively with constituents online.
Trinity-Spadina 
It’s easy to see in this case who had the handle on their “handles” with Thomson dominating social media. This landslide was explained by Marchese’s Facebook presence with his high privacy settings on his profile and he had linked his Twitter account to auto-update his Facebook status – classic mistake, no one wants to chat with a robot. Meanwhile, Thomson’s efforts of engaging posts and interactions were impressive. While this didn’t translate to a seat in office, the race was much closer than the anticipated result of Marchese doubling up on Thomson.
Ottawa Centre
Naidoo held a 12 point lead however was trounced it the polls, similarly, in Klout score. As for Facebook, Naidoo had no updates to his personal profile close to election time and few interactive posts on his Facebook page. Naqvi was not much better on Facebook, with few updates but a much higher response rate on his page. Where Naqvi separated himself was in his use of Twitter, with a true reach of over 1K (175 for Naidoo) his tweets were focused and influential. In this case, again, use of social media was a pre-cursor for an unexpected result.
Northumberland-Quinte West
In conclusion, the results have shown that the social media presences of these underdogs had a tangible impact on the end result of the elections. It is safe to assume that social media in general has a positive impact on ridings but may be further influential for city centre ridings. For me, what has been proven here, is that the impact of social media must be measured by political campaigns in order to properly gauge their polls.
Time will tell whether the winners of the election can properly use these tools in order to keep listening to their voters, or at least make the voters feel like they are 😉
This 10 point lead for Rinaldi disappeared quickly on election night as he was supplanted by teacher and beef farmer Rob Milligan. Rinaldi was non-existent on Facebook but did have a small presence on Twitter with a true reach of 148. His handle was the unassuming @VoteLouRinaldi and he rarely had tweets of any relevance, other than when he congratulated his competitor @RobMilliganPC. While Milligan’s usage of Twitter was not impressive either, his Facebook presence was tangible with updates and a significant amount of followers. While this riding did not prove the same result, however it did show us that this rural riding (and potentially others like it) may be less likely to be influenced by social media.
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