Comparing Online and Offline Political Support

Abstract

Do politicians carry on their interpersonal relations online? We examine how online political support compares to offline support. We overlay two data sets on political support among members of the Swiss National Council to estimate the explanatory power of online endorsements on offline cosponsorship signatures among members, using a gHypEG network regression model. Whereas offline support behavior is driven by a broad range of factors, such as network and homophily effects, endorsement is less diverse. Our findings show that online endorsement is predominantly driven by partisanship and does not mirror the richness found in offline support behavior.