Betting on the Winner? Linking Visual Endorsements on Parliamentarians’ Social Media to Party Leadership Election Results

Party leaders feature prominently on social media. While their social media strategies are well-studied, their visual appearances remain underexplored. This paper demonstrates that parliamentarians tend to visually endorse candidates with greater leadership capital. Analyzing 50,025 Instagram posts by Canadian, German, and British parliamentarians during leadership elections (July 2019–October 2022), we employ a verification algorithm to identify faces and measure visual endorsements. We hypothesize that candidates with more visual endorsements gain higher vote shares in leadership contests. The findings reveal a strong link between visual endorsements and party leadership election outcomes, with significantly more endorsements observed in competitive races. This study contributes to the literature on party leadership, highlighting the intersection of visual communication, political capital, and personalized politics.