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MySpace UK Visitors Among Most Likely Not to Vote
April 10, 2007
I am a political junky and have been intrigued by all of the web 2.0 activity in the run up to the US primaries. David Cameron has WebCameron but should UK prime ministerial hopefuls embark on similar "conversations" through the likes of YouTube and MySpace as the US presidential candidates?
Setting aside the obvious PR benefits of launching a campaign on YouTube and attracting thousands of friends on MySpace, I looked at Hitwise data to better understand the voting intentions of MySpace visitors. It seems that the groups most highly represented on MySpace are also those that are most likely not to vote, based on offline statistics compiled by Experian.
The following chart illustrates this with the Online Representation Index of UK visits to MySpace plotted on the X-axis and the offline representation index based on the propensity to vote plotted on the Y-Axis.
The groups in the bottom right hand quadrant are the groups that are most likely to be on MySpace but are least likely to vote. As you can see the groups that are most highly indexed on MySpace fall into this box. Municipal Dependency is 36% more likely to be on MySpace.com (versus the UK online population) and is 36% less likely to vote than average for the offline population. Welfare Borderline is 21% more likely to be on MySpace.com and 26% less likely to vote. Blue Collar Enterprise is 13% more likely to be on MySpace and 10% less likely to vote.
Keep in mind this data is at the household level - not the voter level. However, any parent knows that kids can have tremendous "pester power". So even if it is the teens being exposed to the political message on the website, if they come from a household that votes, the message can still get through to the voter.
This doesn't mean that politicians should ignore social networks. Social networks account for 6% of upstream visits to politics websites last week and Blogs a further 6%. Together they are nearing the traffic levels referred by News and Media websites (14%). This does point out that politicians ought to diversify their online strategy to ensure they are reaching their PR quota as well as potential voters.
Update:
Andy wisely suggested that I add a bubble based on offline population size. If you thought the last chart was a bit complex, you will love this one! :)
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Posted by Heather Hopkins at 05:52 PM
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Comments
Very useful information Heather - I will certainly be making use of it in my council to help persuade waverers to 'do' MySpace.
Posted by paul canning | April 11, 2007 08:16 AM
I think we can also take this to imply something very different from what you suggest. These new web 2.0 social networks are ways to reach groups whose interests are often underrepresented and whose voices (because of many reasons, including not voting) are often unheard. So politicians hoping to make a win should look elsewhere, but politicians and other concerned citizens hoping to develop the robustness of our democracy should turn to myspace to reach these groups and get them out there on election day.
Your graph is exciting, because it seems to me that it supports the notion that the web really is a great way to deepen democratic participation even among traditionally under-participating groups.
Posted by Nathan Vogel | April 13, 2007 11:12 AM
Nathan, Such optimism in politics! I hope your sentiment is true.
Not so long ago I worked in politics as the youth chair for a national election campaign (in Canada). I agree it is necessary to engage with and reach out to young voters and I do hope that if young voters are part of the conversation they will turn out to vote.
Alas, perhaps I am too much of a cynic!
Heather
Posted by Heather Hopkins | April 15, 2007 10:12 PM
Great chart Heather, but it's screaming out to be a bubble chart, with the size of UK population as the size of the bubble!
Really interesting analysis though - another filter to put it through would be the swing voters in marginal constituencies - to see which websites could swing an election.
Posted by Andy | April 10, 2007 06:34 AM