Theme Analysis

This page shows you statistics about the themes in political Facebook ads (since 1 September 2020). These are the results of a research project about matching themes to political Facebook Ads. For more detailed information about this analysis and methodology (e.g. the meaning and origin of the themes) please read the paper.

These graphs show you how much each party advertises about each theme. The left graph shows how many ads a party ran about each theme. The right graph shows how many people were shown the ads (called impressions) about each theme. For example, this shows you that D66 advertised the most about education & culture, but that their ads about climate were shown the most.

These graphs show who the ads about each theme were shown to. Facebook provides three types of demographics: female/male ratio, age groups and regions. For example, this shows you how many people were shown ads about housing.

These graphs look more deeply into who has been shown ads. These graphs do not only look at who was shown ads about each theme, they also take the parties into account. For example, this shows you how many people were shown ads by D66 about housing.

All the graphs on this page are about ads that were matched to a theme. However, many parties also run ads that are not about a specific theme. This graph shows how many ads ran by a party are matched to a theme and how many are not.

• Parties run ads about organisational matters. For example, becoming a member or a conference they are organising.
• Parties run ads about broad messages (e.g. "We need new leadership") or specific candidates.
• Parties run small ads consisting of only a few words. These are hard to match to a specific theme.

For example, these graphs will tell you if a party is focussing on themes or on other factors (e.g. their party leader) in their messaging.