Now there are still a few days until the second round of the presidential elections in France and, as in 2017, there will be a duel between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.
The unknown factor is represented by the 7.6 million votes that voters, mainly from the left, gave to JeanLuc Mélenchon in the first round, during the controversy over the published by INSEE, Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques data rages. (the equivalent of our ISTAT), according to which almost 227,000 voters had been arbitrarily excluded from the electoral roll, according to the front page of Le Parisien on Monday 18 April.
In this climate, ANSA and DataMediaHub analyzed the presence of the two challengers on social media to understand if and what signs are emerging regarding the possibility of each of them being elected President or not.
Macron’s YouTube channel has 245,000 subscribers and totaled 17.8 million views as of April 18. About 167,000 of them in the last thirty days. Far fewer subscribers to Le Pen’s YouTube channel: almost 64,000. But the views of his videos were more than double those of Macron: more than 397,000, with the channel dedicated to the presidential elections and containing 87 videos, while on the current French President’s channel the latest video is a month ago.
On the other evergrowing social video platform, TikTok, the President of Rassemblement National has nearly 480,000 followers, and over the past thirty days, the six videos posted have garnered 1.2 million likes. As for YouTube, Macron’s following is significantly larger: 2.9 million followers, but again no video and only 100,000 new likes in the last thirty days.
On the other hand, the French President has 8.1 million followers on Twitter. About 136,000 more in the last thirty days. But once again, the pressure of its communication on the microblogging platform seems light with only 48 tweets in the last month, averaging 1.6 tweets/day. There are 2.8 million followers of Marine Le Pen. About 70,000 more in the last thirty days. But there were 880 tweets, or a daily average of 29.3 tweets. Again, the pressure exerted by the rightwing candidate is much greater.
On Instagram, Macron Le Pen again outclassed in the number of followers. Almost 3 million versus about 265,000. An average of 1.3 posts per day for the French right exponent versus Macron’s 0.3 (i.e. one post on average every three days), each generating 495,000 interactions versus 654,000. However, given the distance in terms of follower count, these interactions result in a 5.1% engagement rate for Le Pen versus 2.2% for Macron.
The world’s most populous social network, Facebook, puts Macron at 4.3 million followers and Le Pen at 1.6 million. On Twitter, the rightwing candidate’s pressure has been intense, averaging 21.9 posts per day compared to Macron’s 0.7. Pressure, which translates into 5.3 million interactions for the President of the Rassemblement National, compared to about 343,000 for Macron.
After 100 interactions, Le Pen has 62% likes, 15.9% love, 9.6 shares and 9.2% comments. For Macron, on the other hand, likes make up 53.2% of the total, comments 23.3%, I love 6.1% and shares 3.8%.
The contribution of macron that generates stronger commitment it is dated April 10 with the picture of the President voting. Post that gets more than 46,000 likes and other reactions, of which almost 4,000 are mockery (smiley) or anger, more than 1,200 shares and almost 16,000 comments, many of them critical.
The contribution of Le Pen that generates greater commitment it is always from April 10th. Post in which the candidate invites all French people to join (by voting for her). Post that gets 103,000 likes and loves without any reaction of contempt or anger, nearly 9,000 comments, mostly support, and 24,000 shares. Another sign of literally sharing the ideas the bearer of which is the Republic’s presidential candidate.
None of the challengers have scheduled promotions on Facebook and/or Instagram in the past month.
The 23.4% achieved by the candidate on the right in the first round is her best result to date. In the previous elections it had reached 17.9% in 2012 and 17.9% in 2017. According to the latest IpsosSopra poll of April 15, Macron would get 56% and Le Pen 44%. The gap is shorter according to the April 14 BVA poll, which put the outgoing president at 54 percent and the rightwing candidate at 46 percent.
Of course, as is well known, the likes are not always votes, but Le Pen’s pressure and engagement on social media, the unknown being the abstention of those who elected Melénchon in the first ballot, which the polls estimate at 28.9% of their voters , adding another 37.7% of zero/blank ballots, could narrow the gap between the two by bringing already social mediacrowned Le Pen close to the outgoing President.