Comparing the Topics Covered by Main Political Parties and Their Candidates on Twitter and Their Party Platforms. Analysis of the 2016 General Elections in Spain

Abstract

The present study discusses how the main political parties used Twitter during the electoral campaign in the Spanish general elections of 2016. For this purpose, we selected the Twitter accounts of the four parties that reached 86 % of the total votes: Partido Popular (PP), Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), Unidas Podemos (UP) y Ciudadanos (C's). The tweets of each party's candidate for the presidency have also been considered, comparing the topics they deal with in those tweets with their party platforms. The results of the 4,329 tweets analyzed demonstrate a lack of coherence between parties and their candidates and a lack of proportionality in the importance given to different issues in the party platform. We conclude that the modernity attributed to newly created parties does not result in increased activity on Twitter.