The Impact of Social Media and Public Behavior on the Result of the U.S. Presidential Elections

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Since COVID-19, more and more people helplessly rely on the virtual world. Today, nearly 94 percent of Americans have access to the internet, which means that there are 331.1 million internet users nationwide. In the recent society, hints and encouragement about voting are inevitably put on someone who is on social media. The information they received is extremely possible to influence their decision making on the political level. In the previous two elections in 2016 and 2020, social media seemed to play a vital role during the process. This paper investigates the inherent relationship between the result of the elections and public behaviors on social media through data comparison and case study, and also tries to figure out whether they affect each other directly or not as well. Due to the uncertainty and the ambiguousness, other factors, such as Public emotion. The occurrence of images and videos, Social media algorithms, Fact checking organizations, that may exist will also be taken into account to ensure the all-sided consideration. Overall, after many sets of data comparison shows that the social media does not directly affect the result of the presidential election, however, the outcome is the combination of each factors that were mentioned above. All in all, this study offers the voters several other aspects they have to think about when they are making such political election decisions, which force them to think deeper and wider.