If you logged onto Facebook on election day, you probably remember that the social network did their part to get out the vote by displaying a big voting reminder above U.S. voters’ news feeds. “It’s election day, VOTE!” it said. From there, users could either find their voting place via Facebook polling place locator, or they could click the “I’m a voter” button and add to the tally of Facebook users who did their civic duty on November 6th.
Today, Facebook has released a bunch of data from election day, including a demographic breakdown of who clicked that “I’m a voter” button.
First off, the big number – over 9 million users said they voted on Facebook.
Next, Facebook’s data decisively shows that women were much more likely to share the fact that they voted with the Facebook community – almost twice as likely, in fact. Facebook makes a point to say that it shouldn’t surprise us, considering women are twice as likely to share on Facebook in general (comments, likes, status updates).
They also looked at the Facebook voting in relation to political affiliation. Users with democratic beliefs were more likely to click “I’m voting.” In fact, users that labelled themselves as affiliated with Barack Obama, Democratic, Liberal Democratic, Very Liberal, Liberal, and Green were all the most likely to say they voted on Facebook.
And as you would expect, the younger the user, the more likely they were to click “I voted” – no matter the political affiliation.
Some more interesting aspects from the study show that users that liked “Binders full of women” and “Big Bird” were the most likely to share their voting status on the network.
You can read the full report here.