The relationship between campaigning on Twitter and electoral support: present or absent

This study investigates the content characteristics of political communication on Twitter during an election campaign and the relationship between candidates’ style of online campaigning (i.e., politically personalized and interactive communication) and electoral support for those candidates. Thereby, it provides a better understanding of the linkage between the use of Twitter by candidates and effects on preferential votes. Two data sources are used to examine this relationship: a quantitative computer-assisted and a manual content analysis of tweets posted by political candidates during the Dutch national elections of 2010 (N = 40,957) and a dataset containing number of preferential votes for electable political candidates during that period (N = 445). The findings show that using Twitter has positive consequences. Candidates who used Twitter during the course of the campaign received more votes than those who did not, and using Twitter in an interactive way had a positive impact as well.