#LokSabhaElections2019 #NCT #Delhi Political Handles, Popularity
The constituencies in the NCT of Delhi are scheduled to go for elections on May 12th as part of phase six, in this analysis we take a closer look at the constituencies, candidates, their social media handles, etc. There are seven constituencies in Delhi, and 164 candidates will be contesting across these constituencies. 148 (90.25%) of the total candidates are males while 16 (9.75%) of the total candidates are females.
We went through all the Affidavits* submitted by the candidates to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to collect each candidate’s demographics and social media details. The table below covers the distribution of social media handles that we were able curate for the candidates from NCT.
| Number of the ones which were declared in Affidavit | 57 | 95 | 24 |
| Number of handles we were able to curate from above list | 45 | 48 | 17 |
| Number of nominations that had NIL or Not available for social media handles | 107 | 69 | 140 |
Taking a deeper look at the first row (i.e. the candidates who declared their social media details in the affidavit submitted), we find the following gender distribution; i.e. male vs female counts of candidates with accounts on these social media platforms.
| Female | 9 (56.25%) | 10 (62.5%) | 4 (25%) |
| Male | 48 (32.43%) | 85 (57.43%) | 20 (13.51%) |
The age distribution of all 168 candidates can be seen below. We can see that the maximum number of candidates are in the age group 36-45.
To understand the number of candidates from each party, we draw the graph with x-axis being all the parties and y-axis being the number of candidates contesting from that party.
Below is the graph for number of candidates from each of the constituencies. North West Delhi stands out as the constituency with the least amount of candidates contesting.
The graph below describes different age group with the social media handles, we can see that all age group has larger Facebook proportion, smaller Instagram proportion, while we see that older candidates are less likely to have a Twitter account.
Below is the graph for party-wise availability of social media handles.
Among all the profiles we curated, only one candidate declared a LinkedIn account in the affidavit.
To understand the interactions, popularity of social media handles, we collected the user profile information of all the handles. Below is the table showing top 5 users in terms of followers, followings, and tweets with the corresponding counts.
| Followers | Followings | Tweets |
| @GautamGambhir, 9140956 | @ajaymaken, 1500 | @dilipkpandey, 69623 |
| @boxervijender, 3792493 | @dilipkpandey 1222 | @dayanandvats, 14428 |
| @drharshvardhan, 1792545 | @dayanandvats, 1162 | @drharshvardhan, 13104 |
| @M_Lekhi, 1595388 | @brijeshgoyalaap, 1036 | @p_sahibsingh, 11710 |
| @ajaymaken 718873 | @True_Meditation, 1036 | @AtishiAAP, 9743 |
The total number of Twitter verified accounts amongst these is 18, Facebook verified is 14, and Instagram verified is 4. Here is the list of verified handles in each of these platforms.
Twitter: @drharshvardhan, @pankajgupta @ArvinderLovely @AtishiAAP, @GautamGambhir, @ajaymaken, @brijeshgoyalaap, @M_Lekhi, @dilipkpandey, @ManojTiwariMP, @SheilaDikshit, @RajeshLilothia, @hansrajhanshrh, @boxervijender, @raghav_chadha, @rameshbidhuri, @mahabalmishra, @p_sahibsingh
Facebook: drharshvardhanofficial, PankajGuptaAAP, Arvinder.S.Lovely, atishiaap, GautamGambhir, ajaymaken, dilipkpandey, manojtiwariofficial, sheiladikshit.official, raghavchadhaca, ramesh.bidhuri.9, mahabalmishraoffice, parveshsahibsingh, vijendersinghboxer
Instagram: manojtiwari.mp, dilipkpandey, atishi.aap, gautamgambhir55
We collected the bio information of all the Twitter handles, and charted the wordcloud to understand what do these candidates describe themselves as:
Among the users who have accounts on social media, we found 63 candidates who are on at least one of these 3 platforms, while 33 are on at least 2 platforms, and 14 are on all 3 platforms. The youngest canddidate in the Delhi constituencies is Ms. Aditi (Twitter handle) and Mr. Vikash Kumar Mohl, both being 25 years old, and the oldest person contesting the elections is Ms. Sheila Dikshit (Twitter handle).
To access our complete dashboard with interactive graphs, and data, please visit here. For any questions / analysis, please drop an email at pk[at]iiitd[dot]ac[dot]in, we will be happy to answer it for you.
*We collected these details from the Affidavits uploaded on ECI website.
