American International Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AIJHSS)

This retrospective study used American National Election Study (ANES) 2016 Time Series dataset. The study sample included 867 voters between the ages of 18 and 55 to establish an impact of social media on voting for the 2016 presidential candidates. The study used sociodemographic characteristics and social media usage as predictor variables, which could affect the study’s two dependent variables, probability of voting for presidential candidate, Trump or Clinton. The likelihood that those who sent a message on Twitter/Facebook about political issues would vote for Clinton was 50.1% higher than for nonusers. Those who followed politics in media were less likely to vote for Clinton than those who did not follow politics in media. The likelihood that those who used social media to follow the 2016 presidential election would vote Trump was 55.2% higher than for non-users. The findings have implications for future as campaign organizers can target subgroups who tend to vote for the Republican or Democratic candidates. Future studies should elucidate on pathways associating the importance of various forms of online political behaviors that can affect voting behaviors to shed more light on using social media wisely.