New Delhi: The social media picked Arvind Kejriwal as the next chief minister of Delhi much before the poll results on Tuesday confirmed Aam Aadmi Party as the winner. In the last month alone, over a million tweets have been tagged with @ArvindKejriwal on it.
Bangalore based social media aggregator Simplify360 tried to figure out what the social media buzz said about the three prominent parties and their respective candidates.
Arvind Kejriwal was the clear leader with 61 per cent of all tweets and posts mentioning him. Kiran Bedi, BJP's designated nominee was second with 31 per cent of all posts while Congress' Ajay Maken managed just 8%.
In terms of prominence, i.e. the total numbers of links, images, video, etc. shared, once again the media savvy Kejriwal edged out the competition with a score of 59, while Kiran Bedi 33 and Ajay Maken from Congress was at a lowly 9.
A video featuring Arvind Kejriwal by The Viral Fever (TVF), Barely speaking with Arnub had also begun to trend. The satire video shot on February 8 has already had over three lakh hits in under 12 hours.
TVF's founder and chief executive officer Arunabh Kumar said the video was made so that TVF could discuss the shortcomings and mistakes of their party in a cheeky way.
Its timing couldn't have been better. Kejriwal's sweeping victory in the national capital has helped it draw thousands of eyeballs.
Kumar said even Kejriwal's win was perhaps propelled by social media. "It is participative politics and every voter gets a chance to interact with parties on social media," he said.
The Delhi assembly elections on February 7 kept Twitter abuzz with trends like #Delhi-Votes and #ExitPolls and #MufflermanReturns.
Kejriwal also emerged as the most prominent leader with 59% influence on social media. In the last month there were 1.04 million mentions for @ArvindKejriwal, 560,000 mentions for Kiran Bedi and just 56,000 for @ajaymaken, according to Simplify360.
