The Political Attitudes of Voters on Twitter in the Second Round of the Polish Presidential Elections 2015

Abstract

This study aims to answer the question of whether and how the voting attitudes of Polish Twit-ter users correlate with the election results. It also attempts to understand the online mechanismsof expressing political preferences. The data sample consisted of 8698 tweets attributed to 3508users concerning attitudes towards the two candidates in the second round of the 2015 presidentialelection in Poland. Research included semantic analysis and word count techniques. Both approach-es yielded similar results and were extremely close to the official post-election outcome – smallestoffset amounted to less than 0.1. Moreover, experimental exploration of tweets, users’ behaviour,interactions and dynamics of tweet activity was conducted.