Parties’ Voter Targeting Strategies in Western Europe. What Can Facebook Ads Tell Us?

Today, social media are an integral part of modern election campaigns. They give political parties a powerful new tool to target voter groups through tailored ads. But which voters do parties pursue? Tapping into an ongoing debate about party strategy, we study Facebook advertisements to ask: Do parties seek to mobilize their core constituents or, rather, do they target swing voters to broaden their electoral appeal? In response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal surrounding the 2016 US Presidential elections, Facebook now makes political ads publicly available through a searchable database. Crucially, while the targeted audience of other campaign activities is typically unknown (e.g. election manifestos, political debates, or public speeches), this new data source does provide information on the recipients’ gender, age, and subnational region. We analyze (variation in) parties’ targeting strategies across Western Europe to evaluate whether parties seek to consolidate their base or pursue underrepresented demographics, using data from opinion surveys and the most recent national election as a benchmark. With the weakening of party-voter linkages and the rise of new challengers, parties face today an environment of increasingly volatile politics. In this context, some parties might choose to focus on their strength among particular constituencies, others might prefer to broaden their electoral appeal. Analyzing parties’ targeting strategies on Facebook helps us better understand the ways parties adapt to the challenges of today’s politics and sheds light on the evolving means that parties have at their disposal to reach out to voters.