Canadian Politicians Using Social Media To Reach Voters

Top three Canadian politicians are using social media to reach the voters?

While Canada is getting ready for elections on May 2nd 2011, we are seeing more advertisements on YouTube, CTV online and Facebook. Many our friends are sharing their views on the politicians and everyone has their own opinions or what party they support. Then we started noticing some tweets from different politicians. This year – politics has definitely gotten our attention – using social media.

Can the political social buzz give us some hints on who will win the elections in 2011?  More than ever people are expressing their views online using social media and blogs or simply social web.

Let’s take a look at which party leader has more search interest on Google, who has more followers on twitter and Facebook fans. You can follow the twitter list here,

https://twitter.com/roimediaworks/canada-politics

Below is the search interest for the political party leaders on Google (last 30 days),

Conservative Party – Stephen Harper On Facebook And Twitter

Looks like Stephen Harper team is active on top social networking site Facebook and also on Twitter. We haven’t came across any video ads on YouTube or CTV. We have noticed many fake account for all politicians. Here are the screenshots from Facebook and Twitter, Honourable Prime minister has 50,000 fans on Facebook and 128,000 followers on Twitter.

Liberal Party – Michael Ignatieff On Facebook And Twitter

Liberal party leader Michael Ignatieff has more fans on Facebook and using more Facebook applications than any other top politician. As per Facebook he describes himself as a reporter and human rights teacher. On May 2, 2009, Ignatieff was officially endorsed as the leader of the Liberal Party by 97% of delegates at the party convention in Vancouver. The vote was mostly a formality as the other candidates had stepped down. Below are the screenshots from Facebook and Twitter, he has 91,522 followers on Twitter and 57,280 fans on Facebook.

New Democrats Party – Jack Layton Using Facebook And Twitter

Most of the ads we have seen on CTV video or YouTube are from NDP party. With nearly 82,000 followers on Twitter and more tweets to followers than any other politician. Looks like the NDP party is engaging more with the voters. We are surprised to see Prime Minister Mr. Harper’s Facebook fan page doesn’t have any general information like “about”,  not a lot of photos and didn’t see use of any applications. We believe that having this information definitely helps.

Does it mean NDP is doing better job reaching to voters than other Canadian parties using social media? According this….we guess so, but who will be the winner? We have to wait for the election results.

Please note that this article is written for research purposes and does not reflect or opinion any political views. We are just curious on social media and how it is shaping the Canadian elections 2011.