Exploring Mexican Voting Intention Through Spatiotemporal Trends Using Social Media and Open Data Analysis

The 2018 Mexican presidential election represents a distinctive case study, extensively monitored and analyzed through social media streams and news media data. This election holds particular significance in political science due to the high level of citizen participation and the intense political activity observed on social networks. A substantial volume of data was generated and shared by individuals aged 18 to 35, who notably used political memes as a medium for political expression. This paper presents a comprehensive spatiotemporal data analytics framework designed to uncover and explain the complex political trends and insights related to Mexican citizens’ voting intentions during the 2018 presidential election. The dataset analyzed spans the entire presidential campaign and includes diverse geographic regions within Mexico, from the northern, central, and southern areas. It consists of a corpus of 20,000 tweets, 300 Facebook memes, and detailed election results data. Our findings reveal significant trends and insights that link social media data with official election outcomes, even indicating a clear preference for the winning candidate well before election day.