Covering elections is about listening to who's adding to social conversations. Many publishers use CrowdTangle:

Create An Election Live Display:

Step 1: First, decide which Platforms are most representative of the candidates/incumbents in the election you're following (it could be all!)

Step 2: For each Platform you want to track, create a List of each candidate/incumbent's official Pages/Profiles/Accounts.

Step 3: In your Election Live Display, create a Leaderboard column for each of those Lists.  This will allow you to see which candidates are driving the most social conversation and what percentage of the overall interactions for the List comes from each candidate.

Beyond Real Time: Find Long-Term Elections Trends With Intelligence

Step 1: If you haven't already, create a List of the Pages/Profiles/Accounts of each candidate in the election you're following.  Be sure to have a version of this List in each of your Facebook and Instagram Dashboards.
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Step 2: From any Dashboard, go to Intelligence
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Step 3: For each Platform you wish to track, add the Pages/Profiles/Accounts of each candidate you're following in that particular election to the Intelligence graph.
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Step 4: Use this to compare the performance of the different candidates.  You can even click on any point on the graph to see what the top posts were at that time- giving you a sense of what is having the greatest impact on the electorate.
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Step 5 (optional): Export the data as a PDF to share with your larger team.

CrowdTangle's analytics makes it easy to identify new influencers, public Facebook Groups, and publishers whose content is trending in the coverage of the election you're following.  
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Step 1: Create an election-themed Saved Search in your Facebook and/or Instagram Dashboards (whichever platforms are most active in the election coverage).  Set the search up to look for candidate names, for example.
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Step 2: Create a Leaderboard column in your Election Live Display for each of the above Searches you create.  Add any existing election-themed Lists you've created for this election in the "Search Within None of These Lists" field- to remove Pages/Profiles/Groups/Accounts that you are already following.
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Step 3:  Study the top entries in the Leaderboard and consider adding them to your existing Lists for this election.
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You can use your Election Live Display to track the impact of your coverage of the election to that of your competitors.  
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Step 1: Create a List of your competitor Pages/Accounts that also includes your own Pages/Accounts in each of the Platforms that you typically track for competitive insights.  
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Step 2: Create an election-themed Saved Search in your Facebook and/or Instagram Dashboards (whichever platforms you most watch for competitive analytics).  Set the search up to look for candidate names, for example.
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Step 3: Add the competitor List you created above to the "Only Search Within These Lists" field of the Saved Search. (Repeat this for each Platform as necessary)  This will tell CrowdTangle to pay attention only to posts that are both about the specific election you're covering AND from your competitive List.
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Step 4: In your Election Live Display, create a Leaderboard column for each of the Saved Searches you created above.  This will let you and your team keep track of how your election-related coverage is performing compared to that of your competition.
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Step 5 (optional): Set up a Leaderboard Notification to send you and your team a weekly/monthly/etc update on your election coverage performance compared to that of your competition.