[box border=”full”]The analysis below described Iowa as the first truly ‘social’ primary in this year’s Presidential race. But – along with other studies – indications about voting intention based on analysis of the candidates’ social media performance proved premature. Click here for an infographic comparing each candidate’s share of the vote and some of the key social media metrics published in the weeks leading up to 3 January.[/box]

A very Happy New Year to all – and what better time to launch another study?

As I am sure you know, 2012 is US Presidential Election year and the fun starts with the Republican party primary elections, state by state, to decide who should challenge President Obama in November. First up is the Iowa primary tomorrow so we decided to apply PRINT™ to analyse the candidates’ social media performance. Here are the results:

	Rank	PRINT Index™	Popularity	Receptiveness	Interaction	Network	Trust
Ron Paul	1	145	87	50	279	164	145
Newt Gingrich	2	109	92	195	46	107	106
Michele Bachmann	3	84	76	108	66	67	102
Mitt Romney	4	79	86	38	69	98	105
Rick Perry	5	78	170	94	-21	148	-2
Rick Santorum	6	70	66	102	70	37	75
Jon Huntsman	7	64	64	78	17	80	82

The full results are probably mainly of interest to followers of the US political scene but what we found most interesting is the amazing correlation between our survey results and actual voting intention.

Comparing our study data with polling data from respected independent US political polling firm Public Policy Polling, we discovered a strong, positive correlation between social media performance and voting intention in the Iowa caucus.

We also found an equally positive correlation between an effective Facebook page, as measured using PRINT, and national voting intentions.

Both were at a statistically high 95% level of confidence.

For the statisticians among you, here are the details:

1. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were computed to assess the relationship between the social media performance of each candidate (using the PRINT Index™) and their polling results in Iowa (using data from Public Policy Polling). There was a positive correlation between the two variables, r=0.825, n=7, p=0.05.
2. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were also computed to assess the relationship between social media performance of each candidate’s Facebook page (using the PRINT methodology) and their national polling results (using data from Public Policy Polling). There was a positive correlation between the two variables, r=0.818, n=7, p=0.05.

We are not, of course, suggesting a predictive quality for PRINT – our study was 21 December anyway and a lot can change in days during primaries. But these results suggest that the connection between social media performance and voting intention cannot be ignored and that it is not just commercial brands but politicians too who need real social KPIs.