Social Influencers and Election Outcomes

Abstract

Do social influencers affect election outcomes? Social influencers can reach millions of people through social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. However, research on social influencers is scarce and it is unclear whether they can affect elections. I argue that social influencers can influence elections through their role as digital opinion leaders and their power to shape the public agenda. Empirically, this study leverages an event that occurred during the 2019 European election campaign. Eight days before the 2019 EP election, the social influencer Rezo published a video in which he severely attacks the christian democratic CDU/CSU which was watched by over 11.5 million users until the election. Based on a differences-in-differences design, it is shown that the video had a sizeable effect on the election resulting in considerable vote losses for the CDU/CSU. The results are important for the debate on electoral competition and social media.