Where did we do wrong? : A Turkish Election Survey on Twitter

On 12 June 2011 there was a parliament(also government) election in Turkey. Before the elections everybody had a guess about the results. Till that elections, twitter had been used for surveys for former election but the participation had been very low. For that reason the results of the data of the survey had been meaningless. However, by the time went, twitter improved itself and it`s number of users in Turkey increased in number. According to comScore Media Metrix`s research, Turkey had became the 8th country regards to internet penetration for twitter.

http://en.webrazzi.com/2011/05/30/turkish-twitter-user/

The survey had been ended just before the elections. The number of the cyber voters were 6088 totally. Actually it was a decent number for a survey, since a survey conducted by more than 1000 people sought to be enough in terms of elections. And the survey`s results were... RPP 51,8%, JDP 22,8% and NPP 8,7%. This numbers were totally different from the expected results. After one day the real elections had been made and the results were  on the opposite side. JDP 49.95%, RRP 25,94% and NPP 12,98%.


But what was wrong? At least the results, somehow, would have shown the parties in order. In my opinion there were and-also are- two main problems. The main reason that effected this kind of dissimilarity was the digital divide. People who had no access to internet and people who had internet but did not know to use in terms of social media inherently could not participate this voting session on twitter. Since this people as voters had a majority in the society they showed their preferences in the real arena. People`s access to internet is eventually high in Turkey however without using social media in terms of politics it was worthless for our case. The second one was-also is- the lack of using social media in terms of politics by the politician. The president-Abdullah Gul- is the only political figure that uses social media-especially twitter- actively. Other politicians interest on social media had only perfunctory. However by the effect of the US elections and by the enhancing understanding social media and twitter, hopefully the politicians start to use Facebook and Twitter in these days. I am positive and looking forward the twitter use and surveys for the next elections.