American voters used social media to pitch in for Obama, Romney

Several users used social media to encourage or tell others to vote for President Barack Obama or Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

Washington: Several users on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter had used social media to encourage or tell others to vote for President Barack Obama or Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 US presidential elections, a new study has revealed. According to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, nearly a quarter of registered voters told their Facebook friends and Twitter followers in the last month who they were planning to vote for on Election Day.

“More people are on Facebook and Twitter, more people are using them and building them into the rhythms of their lives every day. It’s safe to say that this was a much smaller number even in 2010 and certainly in 2008,” Politico quoted Lee Rainie, the project’s director, as saying. According to the report, 20 percent of voters said they had encouraged others to vote by posting on a social network site, which is significantly more than the percentage of respondents who urged others to vote via text message, 10 percent, or email, 12 percent. Raine said that an increase in social media users getting vocal about politics may be subject to somewhat of a snowball effect, the report noted. “Once they see it as sort of a common practice in their network, at some point it becomes something that they are feeling embarrassed not to share. It becomes a network expectation,” he said. The study was conducted between Nov. 1 and Nov. 4 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points. ANI