The build up to Lok Sabha Elections 2014 saw plenty of debate around the ability of social media to impact the outcome of the world's biggest polling exercise. While we are no closer to an answer either way on that subject, there's no doubt that Friday, the day the election results were announced, was a testament to the growing power of Twitter.
Politicians used Twitter on election day to connect with their followers, and no one did it better than the man waiting to take oath as Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. As reported earlier, within minutes of posting, Modi's "India was won!" tweet became the most retweeted message ever from India. The tweet reached 10 thousand, 20 thousand, 30 thousand, and 40 thousand retweets faster than any other tweet from India.
Modi also added a record 1,04,861 followers on the day, the biggest single-day gain in the number of followers he's seen since joining Twitter. @narendramodi now has over 4.1 million followers on Twitter.
Overall, Friday saw over 2 million election-related tweets over a 24-hour period, with Modi himself finding a mention in 0.73 million of the tweets on counting day. BJP was the subject of 322,596 tweets while 118,717 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) related tweets were sent on Friday.
Since January 1st this year, over 58 million election-related tweets were sent, with Modi being mentioned around 11.85 million times.
As the results came out, and it became clear Narendra Modi would be the next Prime Minister of India, world leaders started congratulating Modi on Twitter. In a change from his Twitter strategy thus-far, where he's rarely, if at all, responded to individual tweets, Modi took the time out to reply to several messages.
Not just world leaders, Modi also acknowledged and congratulated several politicians from India on their respective victories.
"This is truly the first Twitter Election in India, with all major political parties and candidates actively campaigning & connecting with voters on Twitter," said Rishi Jaitly, Market Director, Twitter India. "..it felt like the entire elections was being played out on Twitter - everyone could see Tweets from the main parties, politicians and voters on their mobile devices, on their TV screens or in their daily news reports, or follow key political & media accounts via a missed call to consume their tweets as text messages."
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