Of late, social media platforms like Facebook is seen as an indicator of voting behavior as well as used for extensive campaigning. However, a considerable number of it is below 18 years, the legal age to vote in countries like India. According to a report published in 2014, almost 11% or 10 million of the users at that point of time were below 18 years of age. Question is, in such a scenario, how prudent it is to consider it as a valid measure to gauge voting behavior?
it is not valid per se, as under-aged can't vote, but it can be an indication of their future behavior.
I agree with idea that facebook and other social media platforms could be affect voters esspecially in pluralization of voter choices in terms of providing alternative information network.
First, I think that the ratio of social media users below 18 years of age (%11) is negligible. Therefore, it is suitable measure for estimate effects of social media on voting behavior (if you can remove it from main data; of course, you must do it)
On the other hand, nowadays, I'm trying estimate the main detarminants of voter behaviors in Turkey's election environments. One of the independent variables using in econometric model is "Internet penetration rate" (the proportion of internert user in total population). You might consider using "Internet penetration rate" variable as alternative proxy to social media users especially in developing countries (*)
However, my suggestion is that you might use "social media user" or "Internet user (penetration)" variables as a percentage of total population; not level.
Good luck..
If there was some way to conveniently eliminate the 11% of underage users, then I think you could run some sort of tests to obtain a random sample from the remaining 89% which would be indicative of future voting behavior.
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