Social media the place to announce “I Voted”

Published yesterday, the Pew Research findings show that Facebook and Twitter are used by nearly a quarter of American voters to broadcast who they put a tick against.

A quarter of Barack Obama supporters and 20% of Mitt Romney supporters have used social media to announce their preference.

It’s not surprising to note that younger voters, those age 18 to 29, were the most likely to announce they voted (29%) and 34% encouraged others in their social network to vote for the same candidate. That compares with just 9% of Americans age 65 and over who used social media to persuade others who they should vote for.

However, the most popular way to discuss politics remains face-to-face. Pew’s report found that more than half of respondents said someone had tried to persuade them to vote for Obama or Romney in person in the past 30 days.

Facebook has been keeping track of how many of its users are posting about their voting activity. A newsfeed post that appeared to all Americans of voting age contained a link to maps of polling places along with an “I Voted” button.

As of the time of writing, double the number of women than men had clicked the “I Voted” button with the figures standing at 6,358,001 female voters and 3,277,446 male voters.