Political Attitudes of Voters on Twitter in the Second Round of the Polish Presidential Elections 2015

This study aims to answer the question of whether and how the voting attitudes of Polish Twitter users correlate with the election results. It also attempts to understand the online mechanisms of expressing political preferences. The data sample consisted of 8698 tweets attributed to 3508 users concerning attitudes towards the two candidates in the second round of the 2015 presidential election in Poland. Research included semantic analysis and word count techniques. Both approaches yielded similar results and were extremely close to the official post-election outcome – smallest offset amounted to less than 0.1. Moreover, experimental exploration of tweets, users’ behaviour, interactions and dynamics of tweet activity was conducted.