Although the election wasn’t called until August, social media was already abuzz this summer with political issues that are sure to keep popping up on the campaign trail.
Ahead of Thursday’s first leaders’ debate, Facebook gives us a peek at what Canadians seem to care about when they’re commenting on the social network.
Facebook crunched the numbers on Canadians’ comments about political issues over the summer and broke them down into broad categories like foreign policy, terrorism and the environment. From there, they examined how often these issues were discussed by those who’ve talked politics online to determine what issues seem to be on the forefront of voters’ minds.
Here’s the top-seven list of most-discussed broad issues, taken from June 1 to August 2 and measured by percentage of unique people who have touched on each topic. (Percentages don’t add up to 100 per cent because some people may have commented about both the economy and terrorism, for example.)
Economy: 46%
Over the summer, nearly half of all Canadians who talked about elections issues on Facebook made mention of the economy, making it the most-discussed election issue of the summer.
Here are some examples of economic discussion by readers on stories about the plummeting Loonie, the Alberta government and more:
Governance: 35%
The topic of who’s in charge of running the country is bound to come up when discussing the issues that matter to voters. About one-third of the time, commenters talked about governance when elections issues came up.
Foreign policy: 28%
The way Canada carries itself outside the country’s borders also tends to come up fairly often when people discuss election issues. More than a quarter of commenters brought up foreign policy when engaging in political discussions.
Terrorism/Intelligence/Surveillance: 22%
Bill C-51, terror plots, hacking – several issues relating to surveillance and terrorism have come up in the news this year, and also seem to come up in online conversation.
Government Benefits: 21%
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper made one of the first big promises of the election campaign Tuesday when he announced the . Other government benefits have also sparked discussion over the past couple of months.
Environment/Energy: 19%
Though maybe more of a backburner issue this election, the perennial topics of environment and energy also seem to come up about a fifth of the time when Canadians discuss the issues that are going to be on their minds when they hit the polls.
Social Issues: 17%
To round out the top seven, social issues were mentioned by about one out of six commenters.
Party leaders
Facebook also took a look at Canada’s federal party leaders to see who was being talked about the most. Not surprisingly, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper led the way by a wide margin:
- Stephen Harper (Conservative) 70%
- Justin Trudeau (Liberal) 35%
- Tom Mulcair (NDP) 19%
- Elizabeth May (Green) 6%
- Gilles Duceppe (Bloc Quebecois) 5%
Also not surprisingly, though seven out of 10 people who mentioned a leader had mentioned Harper, not all comments were necessarily positive.
