Does Governing Cost Parties Attention on Facebook? Incumbency, Coalitions and Engagement in Europe, 2010 to 2020

Governing parties tend to lose votes, and junior coalition partners often lose more. Does governing also cost parties attention on social media? I use 660,307 posts from 109 official party pages in 16 European countries, collected through CrowdTangle and covering January 2010 to September 2020, and code each party's place in the national cabinet from ParlGov, with corrections. Fifty-six pages changed status during the period, through 49 entries into government and 43 exits. I compare each party with itself in and out of government, relative to other parties in the same country and month. While in government, a party's posts drew about 18% fewer likes, comments, shares and reactions than the same party's posts in opposition (95% CI 4% to 30%), with the same estimate for the head of government's party and for junior partners. The difference between them lies in volume. The head of government's party posted somewhat more and kept its total engagement, while junior partners posted about 15% less and drew about 25% less in total, an estimate whose interval includes no change. The cost builds with time in office: in its first year the head of government's party drew no less than in opposition, and in its third and fourth years about 40% less. Leaving government did not restore engagement within the two years I can observe. Governing parties' posts were shared less and drew fewer angry reactions. I find no difference between populist and other parties. Event studies around entries and exits are noisy, and parties that entered government had usually gained attention in the year before, so I treat the results as descriptive rather than causal.