Maharashtra polls: Watch out BJP! Sena, Cong catching up in the social media game

With barely a week left for Maharashtra to go to polls, political parties are ramping up their social media presence to gain maximum exposure among the youth. Digital agencies have been hired to manage their online profiles, while party volunteers are busy tracking online sentiment about their party. [caption id=“attachment_1749277” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Reuters[/caption] While there is no substantial study indicating how much social media does contribute to the actual vote, the recent Lok Sabha elections were a clear indication of how the BJP managed to sweep online sentiment in its favour, along with the actual votes. The party’s IT cell had made good use of online platforms to spread its promise of ‘good governance’ and ‘achche din’, a campaign that captured the imagination of online users across the country. And it is no different in these Assembly elections. The BJP is actually taking their social media strategy a step further to provide users easier access to its proposed policies and political promises. According to this PTI report , the BJP has set-up an online ’election committee’ war room, that works 24x7 and sends messages of any development happening in the party to its potential voters. “The candidates are using WhatsApp and Facebook to update the events of the day. We have also been sending messages and using an automated voice calling facility that conveys our message to the people,” Atul Shah, BJP spokesperson who is also the party’s candidate from Mumbadevi constituency told PTI. Taking a cue from the BJP’s success, the NCP, Shiv Sena and Congress have also begun taking social media seriously, with many of them sharing their candidates campaign details as well as development agendas. Take for example Shiv Sena’s Aditya Thackeray (@AUThackeray), who has about 129,000 followers on Twitter or the NCP chief Sharad Pawar’s Twitter handle (@PawarSpeaks) that has about 66,000 followers. Both use their handles to interact with supporters and live tweet campaign details. The Congress’ Prithviraj Chavan, (@Prithvrj) who is leading the party’s poll campaign, has a mere 8,800 followers on Twitter. “We have realised that social media is the best way to reach out to youths, who account for nearly 55 percent of India’s population. NCP has started using this medium extensively now to reach out to our voters,” NCP’s chief media co-ordinator Ravikant Varpe told PTI. And according to  this report in DNA _,_ the Shiv Sena and the NCP are way ahead of the BJP in terms of its strategy to woo online voters. The report adds that the BJP which had used social media as a powerful tool to create an anti-Congress atmosphere as well as project its leader Narendra Modi, who ultimately ended up as prime minister, seems to be floundering in the same domain when it comes to the state assembly elections. But data provided by Topsy, a website that analyses social media performance, shows BJP still in the lead, with Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP battling it out for the second spot. Over the last 30 days (9 September to 9 October) the BJP has a Topsy sentiment score of 59, Shiv Sena and Congress at 44, while the NCP is at 31. Topsy tracks the party’s positive and negative sentiment across social platforms. In terms of tweets, the last 30 days has 43,951 mentions of BJP Maharashtra, 16,877 mentions of Congress Maharashtra, 15,143 mentions of NCP Maharashtra and 14,771 mentions of Shiv Sena Maharashtra (all as of 12 pm on 9 October).

What works in favour of the BJP over others is its already wide-spread presence across forums - something the party effectively managed during the general assembly polls, which the other parties reluctantly took to. The fact that the NCP, Shiv Sena and Congress have finally realised that having a strong online presence does help in its branding comes in as good news, they will still have a lot to do to makeup for lost ground something the BJP has managed to capitalise over the last two years.