According to the emotional reactions on Twitter, Bernie Sanders won last week's debate
No entity is enjoying debate season more than CNN. Ed O’Keefe, Vice President of CNN Politics and CNNMoney, described the success of last week’s Democratic debate to Found Remote and, he said, “the records broken with this debate weren't exclusive to TV ratings.”
Twitter – and its users – is also enjoying debate season. According to the qualitative Twitter analytics company, Canvs, the debate drove 616,8111 of the 5.3 million emotional reactions on the platform last week. And people loved what they were seeing: 31% of the reactions used “love” terms while 19% used “good” terms.
Also driving the conversation last week was the Season 6 premiere of The Walking Dead, which inspired 184,069 reactions – and though it’s the most popular show on cable television, the flashback sequences depicted in black and white drove the highest share of “dislike” and “hate” reactions.
Below, additional insights about the first debate from Canvs, followed by an infographic:
· Bernie Sanders drew 193,236 Reactions, or 31% of total Reactions to the debate. Of Reactions to Sanders, 42% expressed love and 8% expressed hate.
· Hillary Clinton inspired 146,219 Reactions, or 24% of total Reactions to the debate. Of Reactions to Clinton, 39% expressed love and 8% expressed hate.
· The most reacted-to moment occurred between 9:50 and 9:55PM when Hillary Clinton, after being asked if she wanted to respond to Governor Lincoln Chafee’s remarks about her email misdoings, sharply responded “no.”
Reaction source: Canvs. Canvs analyzes Tweets about TV (as captured by Nielsen), identifies Tweets containing emotions, and arranges them into themes called reactions.
Reaction benchmarks based on Canvs data as of 1/1/14.
Tweet source: Nielsen. Relevant Tweets captured from three hours before, during, and three hours after an episode's initial broadcast, local time.