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Digital door-knocking key in modern election campaign

Digital door-knocking key in modern election campaign

Thirty per cent of eligible voters in this country have no cable or satellite television and now rely instead on online news, says Google, making digital door-knocking a key factor in the current election campaign.

Polling done for the company found 56 per cent of Canadian voters have used a search engine to fact-check something a political candidate or party has said and 70 per cent of voters have searched for a political news story online.

Nearly half of Canadian voters are watching less TV than they did four years ago, says Google spokesman Aaron Brindle.

“When those are the kinds of numbers that are out there, obviously it’s going to reflect how Canadians are consuming their news, where they’re getting information,” he tells Yahoo Canada News.

On Tuesday, for example, the search engine saw a huge spike in the number of searches for recession, following media reports of new GDP data that point to a recession.

“It certainly suggests that the Internet, Google and social media are playing an important role for Canadians as they’re trying to navigate the issues that come up during the campaign.”

Political parties and leaders are responding to that change, not just in terms of tweets and posts but in their digital marketing.

“Clearly, they’re going where the electorate is going. They’re going online,” he says.

“The habits of the Canadian voter are changing, in terms of how they get that information and the parties are wise to this evolution.”

Since the election campaign began last month, there have been more than 1.5 million tweets using the hashtag #cdnpoli or mentioning the Twitter handles of federal party leaders, according to Twitter Canada.

And at Facebook, the economy (47 per cent), governance (36 per cent), foreign policy (28 per cent) and terrorism/intelligence/surveillance (22 per cent) dominated discussion in the first few weeks of the campaign.

After the first leaders’ debate, environment and energy surged to the No. 2 spot, behind the economy.

Prior to that debate, Stephen Harper was the most discussed party leader, soaking up 70 per cent of Facebook commentary. The company did not break down the comments into negative or positive.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau accounted for 35 per cent and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, 19 per cent. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May edged out Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe just six per cent to five in Facebook banter.

When the company looked at election chatter by province, the Yukon and Northwest Territories were the most engaged, followed by Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Alberta.

But how engaged are the leaders vying for votes?

Twitter Canada recently looked at a year’s worth of data to see how party leaders engage with users.

Harper likes to tweet about taxes but he doesn’t take questions from the public. The Conservative leader sent out 868 tweets from Aug. 15, 2014 to Aug. 15, 2015, not a single one of them a reply to any comments or questions.

Mulcair sent out 1,491, one per cent of them replies, while Trudeau replies about as often but the Liberal leader is far more active online, sending out 3,133 tweets in that time.

May is making Twitter hay more than all of the others put together, sending out 10,381 tweets over the year. She also engages with followers online, with 29 per cent of those tweets being replies to other users.

A look at just the first four weeks of the campaign by Twitter Canada hints at which leader is getting their message across on social media.

The prime minister’s name continues to be associated more with the trial of disgraced Sen. Mike Duffy than with the economy, taxes or jobs, fuelling partisan attacks on Harper.

As mentions of Duffy rose, so too did mentions of the word change in relation to Mulcair and Trudeau.

“People are interested in change a lot more than they were at the beginning of the campaign,” Steve Ladurantaye, Twitter Canada’s head of government partnerships, told The Canadian Press.

Harper has tweeted from his official account 26 times since he opened the 11-week federal campaign at the start of August. He has focused on taxes, jobs and the economy, in that order, Twitter Canada says.

By contrast, Mulcair has tweeted 225 times and Trudeau 471 times.

Both seem to tweet most often about the same theme: Change. Mulcair, however, tweets more about “experience” than the economy, while Trudeau tweets more about the economy followed by the “middle class.”

May continues to be the most active party leader on Twitter, sending out 1,357 tweets through the first four weeks of the campaign, talking about the economy, “democracy,” and veterans — in that order.

And she continues to engage more often with other Twitter users than any of the other party leaders. That may explain why the top themes in her tweets don’t match those of her opponents.

“She’s out there engaging people on the stuff they’re talking about,” Ladurantaye says. “She’s not confining herself to the talking points or the main issues.”

With files from The Canadian Press