The growing usage of social media by a wider audience of citizens sharply increases the possibility of investigating the web as a device to explore and track political preferences. In the present paper we apply a method recently proposed by other social scientists to three different scenarios, by analyzing on one side the online popularity of Italian political leaders throughout 2011, and on the other the voting intention of French Internet users in both the 2012 presidential ballot and the subsequent legislative election. While Internet users are not necessarily representative of the whole population of a country's citizens, our analysis shows a remarkable ability for social media to forecast electoral results, as well as a noteworthy correlation between social media and the results of traditional mass surveys. We also illustrate that the predictive ability of social media analysis strengthens as the number of citizens expressing their opinion online increases, provided that the citizens act consistently on these opinions.

Previous authors have found greater political support among electoral winners than losers, but they define winners and losers at a single time point, and employ a dichotomous categorization that neglects possible variations within each group. This study considers both the past history of winning or losing and the impact of ideological distance from the government on a political support indicatorsatisfaction with democracy. Using a multilevel model covering thirty-one countries, the authors show that the relationship between winner/loser status and satisfaction with democracy has a marginal dynamic nature and a policy content. Among present losers, previous experience of victory assuaged dissatisfaction, while among those presenting a consolidated 'winning' record, only high ideological proximity to the current government boosted political support.As a mechanism ensuring accountability of the governors to the governed, elections constitute one of the defining features of democracy. Election results shape government composition and policy outputs, most likely to the advantage of voters who support the winning parties. Previous studies have addressed the gap between electoral winners and losers on various dimensions of political support, from specific institutional evaluations to more diffuse aspects concerning democratic principles and procedures, 1 and found that winners express significantly greater support than losers at each level. However, these works define winners and losers in a static fashion by examining their attitudes at only a single time-point, and employ a dichotomous categorization that does not capture possible variations within each group. In this study, we take into consideration both the past history of winning or losing on present attitudes, and the impact of ideological distance from the government on a commonly used indicator of political support, namely satisfaction with democracy.

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