Sean Defoe

Stephen O'Leary of Politico, that getting out on the doors is obviously one of the more difficult bit.

But the online battle this time around is particularly interesting.

And I think it will be interesting to see whether it has made that difference for the likes of, say, the SOC Dems, who are a very heavily online party and look to probably do quite well in both of these elections.

Yeah, the social, I think, fallout from this are certainly the analysis post-election is going to be really interesting to look at because the two constituencies do operate in very different ways and the social approach has been quite different in both.

But certainly if you were calling like a winner, right, or a campaign that got it right, the SOC Dems were definitely the ones who got it right in Dublin.

We saw this coming through really in terms of their approach and a real kind of like digital first approach from a candidate point of view.

The big difference you see now versus five years ago is that five years ago, a lot of the political campaigns on social looked like traditional ad campaigns, right?

Highly polished videos, you know, rehearsed maybe weeks in production, right?

They were literally like almost the old TV ads, but on a social network.

What you're seeing with candidates today, especially the successful ones are, it's much more like a creator, right?

It's first person, low production value, quick turnaround, authentic, all the things that you expect when you're consuming content.

So when it shows up in your feed, it doesn't jar as political content, doesn't feel you're being served a political message.

You feel like you're consuming what you consume from a journalist or a broadcaster or a former politician, whoever it might be.

Right.

It feels like it is that type of content that will naturally kind of come through.

But the age divide is also an interesting thing here because, you know, the point has been made about sort of maybe.

That kind of rural and urban vote in Galway, we're certainly going to probably see that come through on social too.

So if you were judging it right now in Galway, Helen Ogbu would probably be your winner based on social because of the amount of organic buzz and enthusiasm there's been around her.

But we have plenty of examples from the recent past where that really strong excitement on social...

hasn't converted into getting people out to actually vote.