How analyzing social media data can help determine whether or not people will vote

Political scientists have been trying to understand how political campaigns affect voter turnout for decades. Now, with the rise and ubiquity of social media platforms such as Facebook, those who study political campaigns have access to a new and potentially vast data source on voters’ intentions. In new research, Jaime Settle analyses over 100 million Facebook updates, finding that 1.3 percent more users in battleground states posted status updates about politics, and that this increased their likelihood of voting by nearly 40 percent.