Election 2016: Why Twitter is the party to watch
With about 15 months until the U.S. elects its next president, opinions are already bubbling over on social media. In my opinion, social is the new polling; it’s real-time battleground for political buzz. So I ask you this: does a candidate stand a chance without a strong social media strategy and a meme-worthy head of hair?
Social media is positioned to dominate news cycles for 2016; just last month Esquire published this article titled Why 2016 Will Be the Year of the Viral Election and I couldn’t agree more. You could say that last week’s GOP debate set the tone for what we can expect for politics and social. A record-breaking 24 million viewers tuned in to watch the much anticipated sparring between the top 10 republican candidates (out of 17), but I’ll wager that most were glued to the screen anxious to see whatever drama and misbehavior would be caused by the “bombastic” Donald Trump.
And “The Donald” delivered – not just on TV but also on Twitter – where nearly 1.5 million voters joined in with their own commentary on the debate, especially when Donald dished out his straight-talk and egregious comment about arch nemesis Rosie O’Donnell. But Trump wasn’t alone on the receiving end of social boos – he shared that honor with Scott Walker. I wonder just how chuffed Donald was about that?
In another surprising turn, Trump did not receive the most mentions with the official #GOPDebate hashtag – he owned just 17 per cent of the chatter, second to Ted Cruz at 29 per cent. Jeb Bush took 15 per cent of the conversation while former neurosurgeon Ben Carson trailed, with just 1 per cent of the Twitter chat.
But here’s an interesting twist: while Dr. Carson received the least attention on Twitter, his was the most positive according to our data. Maybe Americans are hopeful that Carson can as successfully perform surgery on this country as he did on a set of conjoined twins.
Another crowd favorite was Ohio governor John Kasich, who rocked his home-court advantage and received the loudest applause when discussing his accomplishments as governor. With just 8 per cent of Twitter mentions, Kasich received over 70 per cent of positive sentiment (compared to Carson’s 80 per cent). To put some perspective around these numbers, Trump and Scott Walker were tied last for positive sentiment - at about 25 per cent.
What else in our social intelligence analysis captured our attention? Well, more men participated in the social conversation, comprising 60 per cent of the unique Twitter authors discussing the debate. In fact, over the last seven days leading up to and throughout the event, men were more vocal about the #GOPDebate than female tweeters. This is interesting since our data shows that women actually have a slight lead over men using Twitter in general.
If you could sum-up this debate in #hashtags, the top 10 used in the #GOPDebate conversation on Twitter showcase media favorites Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. The two presidential wannabes inspired the most unique and personal hashtags:
Looking back, politics and social have come a long way: Barack Obama's tweet announcing his victory in 2008 was only retweeted 157 times, while the 2012 one was retweeted more than 800,000 times.
While the presidential candidates themselves might be relatively new to Twitter, they sure do value the power social media yields. If they haven’t already, they will soon ensure teams of campaign staff are laser-focused on creating campaigns that connect and engage. I’m hoping they’ll also take the time to step back from the day-to-day and analyze their social data for patterns and insights. There will be clues in that data that will help them hone in on specific issues, and to target messaging to specific geographies or demographics. Importantly, having a real-time pulse on social will certainly help them spot opportunities (or crises) before they become viral and react accordingly.
I think it’s safe to say that the candidate who wins the 2016 Presidential Election will also be the candidate who uses social to his or her advantage, and potentially the candidate that is discussed the most in volume and positivity on social media. (Just take a look at what Bernie Sanders did during the GOP Debate.)
Will McInnes is the chief marketing officer of Brandwatch. He tweets at @willmcinnes