People interested in how Salvador voters behaved on social media during the 2018 presidential campaign will have a special opportunity on 12 December, starting at 09:00. The event will take place in the auditorium of the Center for Advanced Studies in Digital Democracy, on the first floor of the Faculty of Communication at the Federal University of Bahia (Facom-UFBA). It will present the results of a household survey conducted in Salvador from 12 to 23 November. The survey examined how voters in the capital of Bahia used digital technologies to make electoral decisions.
P&A Pesquisa e Análise conducted the survey using a questionnaire developed by researcher Rosane Santana. She is a member of the Research Group on Communication, Politics and Digital Networks (CP-redes), the Graduate Program in Contemporary Communication and Culture (Facom/UFBA), and the National Institute of Science and Technology in Digital Democracy (INCT-DD). The research is funded by CNPq.
With 625 household interviews and a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, the survey has a confidence level of 95.5%. The sample is based on the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) document “Estatísticas do Eleitorado Brasileiro 2018” (2018 Brazilian Electorate Statistics) and the population distribution set out in Salvador’s Urban Development Master Plan (Municipal Law 9069/2016).
The results show the electorate’s sociodemographic profile (sex, age, education, income, religion, and skin color), media consumption (TV, newspapers, radio, etc.), internet access (location, frequency, devices used, purposes, etc.), social media use (frequency of access, topics shared, political participation, etc.), and political attitudes (political interest, party preference, civic participation, etc.). The study covers both majority elections (president, governor, and senators) and proportional elections (federal and state deputies).
The survey continues the research Rosane Santana began during the 2014 presidential election. That work received an Honorable Mention in the 2015 Antonio Lavareda Award for its new methodological approach in Brazil. It examines voters’ online and offline behavior at the same time. Santana adapted the methodology from studies by political scientists Terry Towner, of Oakland University in Michigan, USA, and Sara Vissers and Dietlind Stolle, of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship (CSDC) at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.