If you logged onto Facebook on November 4, chances are you saw a number of large blue stickers reading “I Voted” in your newsfeed. The feature, which Facebook debuted in 2008, may seem just like another tool for millennials to use to track every facet of their lives, but for Mark Zuckerberg and his behemoth of a social media machine, it’s meant to be much more.
It’s no longer shocking to say that Facebook runs experiments on its users. The “I Voted” sticker was one of those experiments. The mad geniuses working for the social media giant wanted to see whether or not making voters more visible on the platform of over 1.4 billion active users could drive more people to vote in midterm elections, elections which are classically less popular than their presidential counterparts. The company claims that the “I Voted” sticker is responsible for more than 610,000 votes that were cast during the 2010 midterms. With 91% of American adults regularly using http://www.databerry.com/news/, the idea is far from crazy, but do the statistics bear out Facebook’s claims?
The experiment broke down in the following way: one group http://www.databerry.com/news/of users wasn’t shown when their friends posted the sticker. Another saw a list of friends who had voted next to the sticker box, and a third group saw both their friends’ stickers in their feeds and their names next to the selection box. People in the third group were 0.6% more likely to go out and vote. These are the people Facebook says make up the 610,000 more people who turned out to vote in 2010.
Maryland Turnout Doesn’t Make a Great Case for Facebook
While Facebook didn’t run the same experiment for this year’s midterms, it did track the data for people using the “I Voted” sticker. Users clicked the sticker button at a rate of 358,000 people per hour from the time the polls opened to the time they closed on Tuesday. As in other parts of the northeast, usage of the “I Voted” sticker was extremely high here in Maryland.
If Facebook’s supposition that its social media sticker drives voters is true, then it stands to reason that turnout for Tuesday’s midterm elections would have been equal to or higher than the 2010 turnout. Unfortunately, voter turnout this year was lower than in 2010, with many states posting record lows. Here in the Free State, only an estimated 40% of voters showed up to the polls. That’s a 14% decrease from 2010. In other words, even with high adoption of Facebook’s election day gimmick, Marylanders weren’t driven to vote. If early reports on national turnout are any indication, turnout in Maryland echoes what was seen across the United States.
Do you think social media platforms using these types of gimmicks could actually push more people to vote? Tell us what you think in the comment section below.
