If you only have a few seconds, read these lines:

• Between October 25 and 27, the accounts of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates generated 4,047,153 interactions on Facebook and Instagram.
• On Instagram, the presidential ticket which obtained the most interactions was the Frente de Todos. However, the Macri-Pichetto ticket won on Facebook.

The end of the campaign and voting were followed in different social networks (see here). With 31 million active users per month, Facebook is one of the networks with the most users in the country, followed by Instagram. Both networks were stages for the campaigns of the presidential tickets. Here is an analysis of the main publications and interactions.

The “Democracy Room” team at Chequeado manually examined the publications and public meters of the accounts of all presidential and vice-presidential candidates (see all the data here). Eight of the accounts were verified, and the remaining 4 (Juan José Gómez Centurión and Cynthia Hotton (NOS), and José Luis Espert and Luis Rosales (Despertar)) were confirmed to be official profiles by the candidates themselves. The period analyzed was from October 25 (the end of the campaign as established by the National Electoral Code) to October 27 after the disclosure of the election results according to the provisional ballot.

In total, 4,047,153 interactions were registered in both platforms. Interactions include comments, shares, likes and other reactions (“Like”, “Haha”, “Wow”, “Angry”, “Love” and “Sad” on Facebook). Instagram does not allow access to information about the stories (publications which disappear after 24 hours), where publications from other accounts are usually shared.

Reactions on Facebook for each presidential candidate

Like / Love / Grr / Wow / Sad / Haha

Source: Elaborated by Chequeado based on the number of reactions registered on Facebook on November 3, 2019.

The platform with the most publications in the period analyzed was Facebook, which registered 51 publications, compared to 45 on Instagram. However, the Instagram had a higher number of interactions (61.3%) compared to Facebook (38.7%).

Among the possible interactions on Facebook and Instagram (shares, likes, comments and others), 89% of the users participated using “like” or using some of the standard reactions on Facebook (for instance, 2,745 people indicated that they were angry with the candidates’ publications). Only 7.5% of the interactions registered were comments.

Out of all publications in both networks, the most popular was a photo of president Mauricio Macri thanking his electors after his defeat. On the other side of the spectrum, the governor of Salta and vice-presidential candidate Juan Manuel Urtubey (Consenso Federal) obtained only 135 interactions on Facebook with a photo of his participation in handing out specialization diplomas in Integral Sexual Education (ESI) in Salta. The least noticed publication on Instagram with only 329 interactions was the image of the campaign end of Nicolás Del Caño’s FIT Unidad (Workers’ Left Front) ticket, which was shared by the vice-presidential candidate, Romina Del Plá.

In total, the presidential ticket with the most interactions on Instagram was the Frente de Todos of Alberto Fernández-Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, which obtained 1.5 million interactions. It was followed by the Juntos por el Cambio, with 799 thousand. The opposite happened on Facebook: the Macri-Miguel Angel Pichetto ticket came in first place with 903 thousand total interactions, compared to the 608 thousand obtained by the winning duo Fernández-Fernández.

Both tickets made more publications on Facebook than on Instagram. However, both of them obtained more interactions in the latter. For instance, the Frente de Todos candidates stood out in their Facebook publications, but had almost double the number of interactions on Instagram.

The Roberto Lavagna-Urtubey ticket reversed this trend: they published more on Instagram, but had more interactions on Facebook. The FIT ticket (Del Caño-Del Plá) preferred to use Instagram more than Facebook, and obtained more interactions there. The same happened to Espert-Rosales. Lastly, Gómez Centurión-Hotton chose Facebook to make more publications, and obtained more interactions there.

Total interactions in each platform

Source: Elaborated by Chequeado based on the number of reactions registered on Facebook on November 3, 2019. The number of likes and comments was measured on Instagram on November 3, 2019.

Naturally, the number of followers also affects the number of interactions, since the publications can be seen by more people. Among the candidates, Mauricio Macri has the highest number of followers on Facebook (4.5 million) and on Instagram (1.1 million). Fernández, the president-elect, has 267 followers on Facebook and 637 thousand on Instagram.

Number of followers of the presidential candidates and their VPs on Facebook and Instagram

Presidential candidates
Vice-Presidential candidates
Source: Elaborated by Chequeado based on the number of followers registered on October 30 in the accounts or fan pages of the candidates on Facebook and Instagram.

Out of all presidential candidates, Fernández’s account published the most in both platforms, although he shared the first place with Gómez Centurión on Facebook. However, the leader of the Frente NOS came in last place on Instagram, with only one publication where he could be seen voting. On Facebook, Lavagna had the least publications of the six candidates.

In turn, among the vice-presidential candidates, the one with the most publications in both platforms was Del Plá (FIT Unidad), who published photos and videos about the demonstrations in Chile, links to notes, a live video from the bunker on the day of the election and his photo voting, among other publications.

More publications does not necessarily mean more interactions. Therefore, observing the interactions related to the amount of publications, we can see that the Macri-Pichetto ticket came ahead. In second place came Fernández-Fernández, and in third, Espert-Rosales.

In terms of content, many candidates repeated their publications on Facebook and on Instagram. For instance, Macri’s publication after his defeat was posted at the same time in both platforms. Fernández did the same last Sunday with his compliments to former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for his birthday. He obtained 36,100 interactions on Facebook and 209,925 on Instagram. Fernández also mentioned the former president during this speech at the Frente de Todos bunker. The other candidates obtained more interactions in the publications where they can be seen voting or leaving the ballot.

* The Digital Democracy Room is a project of FGV DAPP in Brazil in partnership with Chequeado, Linterna Verde and Ojo Público. It’s goal is to monitor and analyze the digital conversations regarding the electoral context.

The analysis is available the website of Chequeado here.