A longitudinal study of online campaigning in the most digitally advanced society in the world

Abstract

The internet has become a key battleground for political parties and candidates running for office. Using data from three consecutive parliamentary elections in Estonia, spanning across the last decade, we map the extent to which candidates make use of online campaign tools. The availability of candidate survey data over time enables us to evaluate how online campaigning has evolved in a country at the forefront of digitalization. Our findings show that, despite a highly wired context, candidates still do not exploit the internet to its full potential. We observe a significant increment in candidates’ presence on the web, but the effort remains limited in terms of the range of digital campaign tools used. In addition, we find that candidates’ political profile has a limited influence on their digital proclivity, while young age and intensity of their overall campaign effort are stable predictors of it across the decade.