Keeping up with the murphys? Candidate cyber-campaigning in the 2007 Irish general election

Abstract

This article addresses the factors that influenced candidates' likelihood of cyber-campaigning in the 2007 Irish General Election. We consider the roles of party affiliation and support as well as intra-party competition, candidates' monetary and political resources and the marginality of the electoral race. We also provide the first empirical test to date of whether candidates' decisions to cyber-campaign are influenced by the behaviour of their direct political opponents. Monetary resources, party affiliation and the behaviour of opponents are found to have statistically significant effects on the probability of a candidate conducting a cyber-campaign.