Twelve short months ago, the default tactic to engineer rapid political engagement online was to shell out vast amounts of money to run paid adverts across social media sites.

No matter the location, no matter the platform – YouTube, Google, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok – political parties have in the past year alone allocated five and six-figure sums to digital ad spending in an effort to influence potential voters in real-time. With the blunt logic being that bigger budgets would reap higher online engagement with the electorate.

In fact, the scale of social spending spiraled to new heights during what became known as the global year of elections. In 2024, more than 50 countries worldwide went to the polls, and data has since revealed that the total bill for political ad spending across these countries climbed above $2 billion. Meta alone (read: Facebook and Instagram) accounted for half of that enormous figure.

On these shores, it wasn’t uncommon to come across political ads shoehorned into our social feeds, either. During Ireland’s last general election, over €160,000 was spent on social media advertising by all main parties in the two months prior to the polls officially opening.

Contrast that with October’s Presidential Election, which unfolded on a digital frontier redrawn entirely by a new EU transparency law. Effective from mid-October, the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising Regulation, to give it its official title, introduced stricter disclosure requirements for any political message that voters may be exposed to on digital platforms.

Now, personal data can only be used for targeting and audience segmentation – precious parameters for past political campaigns – if those same users have given explicit consent. Even before the law came into force, Big Tech went one step further to restrict all political ads outright after Meta cited “unworkable requirements” within the legislation itself.

This blanket ban effectively left political teams in Ireland without the tried-and-tested option of boosting their campaign content. Which only placed the onus on original, organic social collateral for communicating political messages to the masses.

Authentic content became something of a throughline for both Heather Humphreys’ and Catherine Connolly’s respective campaigns. Whether that involved revving a Harley-Davidson or doing keepie-uppies with impressive form, this shift towards candid content – as raw as it was relatable – served to humanise the very individuals canvassing to convert likes and shares into votes and, ultimately, victory.

Neither social media campaign was without its mishaps, of course, such as when an image of the Reichstag found its way into a campaign video instead of Belfast City Hall. While the deep-fake video appearing to show Connolly’s resignation from the race not only revealed the stark ‘reality’ of politics in this AI age, but it also demonstrated how traditional political campaigning like a formal Dáil speech – easy fodder for manipulation – was no longer going to cut it. Ripping up the rulebook of ‘politics as usual’ meant reaching voters through viral content.

A similar dynamic unfolded across the Atlantic, albeit without the legislative factor of EU transparency laws, where Zohran Mamdani also placed a strategic focus on substance over style to engage the New York electorate. Subsequent analysis of Mamdani’s historic win has identified a similar shift away from the traditional campaign model. No longer orchestrated from the top-down, but instead starting as a grassroots movement that generates its engagement through viral videos involving volunteers that ultimately helped mobilise a record number of online followers and, in turn, voters.

Mamdani’s eventual election victory may not have been quite the landslide as Connolly’s – 63% of first-preference votes, after all – yet with a turnout of over 2 million people, the 2025 New York Mayoral election drew its highest number of voters in decades. That’s no coincidence. In Ireland, too, Connolly’s campaign drove unprecedented youth turnout at the polls, a sure-fire sign of social’s capacity to capture attention, yes, but also to transform apathy into action.

Meeting younger voters where they are, and speaking the language of the social platforms, brought about new levels of participation because it’s that same audience who are already so well versed in content creation. They are at the forefront of this seachange in online engagement, which helps ensure that more young people are not just part of the political conversation, they themselves are shaping its outcome.

Gone are the days when social media was viewed simply as a broadcast channel, or a vehicle for voters, it’s now evolved into a thriving ecosystem of participation. Where movements catch fire and political narratives are shaped and re-shaped in real time.

For two very different elections that unfolded on opposite sides of the Atlantic, savvy social strategies proved both the common thread and recipe for success. Connolly and Mamdani’s respective campaigns sought to redefine political engagement online, illustrating the ways in which social media is no longer an accessory or add-on, but the arena in which campaigns can be either won or lost.