India's Ballot Battle Will Also Run Through Facebook

India’s Ballot Battle Will Also Run Through Facebook is a Hindustan Times Tech article published on 4 March 2014. The report covers Facebook’s launch of an election tracker tool for India’s 2014 general elections and examines research suggesting social media could influence outcomes in 160 parliamentary constituencies. The piece features commentary from Sunil Abraham and a skeptical response from Communist Party MP Gurudas Dasgupta.

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Article Details

📰 Published in:: Hindustan Times Tech
📅 Date:: 4 March 2014
👤 Authors:: Zia Haq
📄 Type:: News Report
📰 Newspaper Link:: Read Online

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Facebook on Tuesday launched its widely awaited "election tracker" for the upcoming general elections, a move that signals the growing importance of social media as a political tool in a rapidly urbanizing India.

India's 2014 ballot battle will run through the social-media world, which could likely influence electoral outcomes by swinging 3-4% votes, as more and more young Indians go online to make sense of politics, according to two new surveys.

In these mostly urbanising seats, social-media usage is now "sufficiently widespread" to influence politics, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). An offline study conducted by market research firm TNS and Google India suggested similar shifts.

The Facebook tracker (http://on.fb.me/1g6ZJ3k) will help India's 93 million Facebook users to see which parties and candidates as well as issues are trending.

Social-media platforms are likely to be influential in 160 of India's 543 Parliament constituencies, making Facebook and Twitter users the nation's newest voting bloc, according to the IAMAI survey.

These are constituencies where 10% of the voting population uses social media sites such as Facebook, or where the number of social media users is higher than the winning candidate's margin of victory at the last election.

Research shows that social media is more persuasive than television ads. Nearly 100 million Indians, or more than Germany's population, use the Internet each day. Of this, 40 million have assured broadband, the ones most likely to have at least one social media account.

"Unlike Obama who used social media directly for votes, Indian politicians have tended to use it more to mould public discourse," says Sunil Abraham, the CEO of The Centre for Internet and Society.

"I think these trends are over-hyped and the impact, if any, would only be marginal," said Communist Party of India MP, Gurudas Dasgupta, who created a Facebook account only last month.

Context and Background

The 2014 general elections marked a watershed in Indian digital politics. Voting occurred across nine phases between April and May, ultimately delivering a decisive victory for Narendra Modi’s BJP with 282 seats. Facebook’s election tracker tool emerged two months before polling began, allowing users to monitor trending parties, candidates and issues across the platform’s then-93 million Indian user base.

The IAMAI study cited in this report identified 160 “high-impact” constituencies where social media penetration exceeded 10% of voters or where Facebook users outnumbered the previous election’s winning margin. This represented roughly 30% of parliamentary seats and concentrated in urban and semi-urban areas with reliable internet access. Research suggested social media campaigns could swing 3-4% of votes in states with sizeable internet usage—a potentially decisive margin in close contests.

Modi’s campaign pioneered scaled digital outreach in India, deploying teams to monitor sentiment, generate content and disseminate messaging through mobile platforms. By election day in May 2014, 29 million Indians had made 227 million election-related interactions on Facebook alone, with Modi personally accounting for 75 million interactions. This contrasted sharply with traditional left parties like the Communist Party of India, whose leadership remained skeptical of social media’s electoral impact despite belatedly establishing token online presence.