Short answer
They fall back. Engagement rises steeply through a campaign and drops sharply once the votes are counted, and the extra attention for winners does not last.
What the evidence shows
- The study follows 95 party pages through 229 party-elections in 16 European countries. In the final week of a campaign, engagement was nearly six times its level twelve weeks earlier.
- In the following months pages posted about a third less and received about 40% fewer interactions than before the campaign began.
- For parties that gained two or more points of the vote, the median post in the election week and the week after drew about 2.7 times its pre-campaign level, against 75% to 95% more for other parties. The advantage did not last.
- From 2016, Angry reactions rose by about 1.3 points on the pages of parties that stayed in opposition; on the 12 parties that entered government, Love rose by 2.2 points and Angry fell.
Caveats
The results are associations across party-elections, not proof that votes caused the response.