Campaign Digitalization and Electoral Volatility in Local Elections: The Roma Parties in Romania

The electoral volatility of ethnic parties is often low because the members of the ethnic group that they seek to represent often vote for them. This does not apply to the Roma parties in the Romanian local elections where their electoral support fluctuates greatly from one election to the next. To explain this variation in electoral support from the 2016 and 2020 elections, this paper looks at the party digitalization as a key determinant. The digitalization is measured as the existence of social media campaign pages, number of posts on those pages from the campaign team / candidates, frequency of posts. In addition, the paper also considers the content of digital communication (what topics were approached). The quantitative analysis includes all the localities in the country (N=160) where Roma parties competed in local elections both in 2016 and 2020 so that volatility can be calculated. It uses party-level variables and controls for party organization, competitors' strength, and voter turnout.