Targeting voters online: How parties’ campaigns differ

Abstract

How do parties target campaign ads online? Despite the growing importance of digital campaigns, only a few recent studies have analyzed whom parties are targeting. Do parties aim to persuade or mobilize voters? This paper analyzes how parties target and how they differ in their use of targeting using a new and comprehensive dataset, matching data from the Facebook Ad Library with EES survey responses. The dataset contains over 100,000 Facebook and Instagram ads from 148 parties for the 2019 European Parliament elections. The results show that smaller and niche parties have targeting strategies more narrowly focused on their supporters, whereas larger parties target a broader audience. My findings have important implications for research on voter targeting and the ongoing debate about the regulation of campaigns online.