Twitter Momentum - Presidential Candidates - August 29, 2015

August 29, 2015

[SamAdams76]

As social media plays an increasingly important role in presidential politics, I thought it might be useful to point out where the currently announced candidates stand with regard to Twitter follower growth in a given calendar month. Periodically, throughout the current month, I will update this so that we can see who is gaining the most followers, as that is an indication of momentum. Whereas, if a candidate’s follower growth is “flat”, that is an indicator that the candidate may be losing momentum.

On the first of each month, I will do a reset and everybody is back to a level playing field. This will more clearly show who has the momentum and who does not.

Now some caveats here. Some politicians have been known to boost the number of their followers with bogus accounts. For instance, Shrillary Clinton is the biggest offender with over one third of her followers confirmed as bogus.

On the other hand, other candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have the highest percentage of legitimate followers.

For these rankings, I have separated the candidates by political party and also included a column for the Twitter handles I am pulling the numbers from. That way, if I am not using the proper Twitter handle, please feel free to point that out to me and I will change it for future updates. For example, some of the candidates have handles associated with their senator or governor status and I switched over to their official campaign 2016 handles, even though these handles might have much less followers. Again, the purpose here is to assess momentum with their presidential campaigns.

In September, I will flush out the August follower growth and reset for September 1. I will do this throughout the campaign so long as there is interest.

As the month of August winds down, it has clearly been a Trump month. So far Trump has gained over a half million follower this month which is more than the total amount of followers for many of his competitors. If Trump carries this pace into September, he will pass Shrillary Clinton in terms of total followers at some point in mid-September - including all her fake ones.

The reason for this is simple. More than any other candidate, Donald Trump knows how to make effective use of Twitter (and other social media tools) and he has found a way to communicate directly to the American people, circumventing the gatekeepers of the mainstream media. Now there is some risk in this approach as not all of Trump's Twitters have been "presidential" but through his massive use of Twitter (he's put out close to 28,000 Tweets over the past 5 years), he has inoculated himself for the most part as now everybody sees it as "Trump being Trump." They wouldn't expect anything less!

Due to the turbulence of the race on the Democratic side, with Shrillary Clinton facing possible indictment and jail, I have added in non-announced candidates such as Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Howard Schultz, all of whom have all been named in the media as possible entrants. Should Shrillary be forced out of the race, you can bet that the Democrats are not going to stand by and watch avowed socialist Bernie Sanders gain the nomination.

On the Republic side, Donald Trump has shaken things up quite a bit. The favored GOPe choice of Jeb Bush is stumbling badly as non-establishment candidates such as Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina are all gaining significant momentum. I have decided to add two unannounced candidates. Mitt Romney, who it is rumored the GOPe is trying to recruit due to Jeb Bush falling so flat. Also Sarah Palin, who looks to be playing a more active role this time around.

[SamAdams76]

Due to HTML tables not formatting properly in the Body of Thread, I will post it below as a reply instead.

[SamAdams76]

Name	Twitter Handle	8/1/2015	8/29/2015	MTD Gain
Donald Trump	@realDonaldTrump	3,409,127	3,957,097	547,970
Ben Carson	@RealBenCarson	393,107	526,835	133,728
Carly Fiorina	@CarlyFiorina	384,524	467,501	82,977
Marco Rubio	@marcorubio	772,150	828,544	56,394
¿Jeb Bush	@JebBush	239,197	279,564	38,769
Ted Cruz	@tedcruz	443,426	482,195	38,769
Scott Walker	@ScottWalker	167,564	197,616	30,052
Rand Paul	@RandPaul	654,136	674,279	20,143
John Kasich	@JohnKasich	80,497	100,344	19,848
Rick Perry	@GovernorPerry	305,523	314,582	9,059
Bobby Jindal	@BobbyJindal	203,428	211,203	7,775
Sarah Palin	@SarahPalinUSA	1,164,376	1,169,939	5,563
Rick Santorum	@RickSantorum	236,439	240,748	4,309
Chris Christie	@ChrisChristie	40,234	43,604	3,370
Mitt Romney	@MittRomney	1,668,343	1,670,373	2,030
Linda Graham	@LindseyGrahamSC	23,043	24,768	1,725
Mike Huckabee	@MikeHuckabeeGOP	0	879	879
Jim Gilmore	@gov_gilmore	356	1,132	776
George Pataki	@Gpataki2016	0	503	503

Name	Twitter Handle	8/1/2015	8/29/2015	MTD Gain
Bernie Sanders	@BernieSanders	201,234	385,143	183,909
Shrillary Clinton*	@HillaryClinton	3,958,846	4,134,657	175,811
Martin O'Malley	@MartinOMalley	17,448	82,149	64,701
Joe Biden	@JoeBiden	874,478	906,548	32,070
Elizabeth Warren	@elizabethforma	140,293	148,956	8,663
Jim Webb	@JimWebbUSA	11,616	13,205	1,589
Lincoln Chafee	@LincolnChafee	17,892	18,837	945
Howard Schultz	@HowardDSchultz	25	27	2

*Shrillary Clinton is under investigation for mishandling classified information and betraying the United States of America, she faces indictment and imprisonment. Also, she is a cheater as over 1/3 of her Twitter Followers are confirmed as FAKE.

[InterceptPoint]

Nice job. And a worthwhile project.

[LS]

Great work Sam. You have singlehandedly disproven the notion in one stupid article that “most of Trump’s followers aren’t political,” because he has GAINED more in August alone than any GOP candidate save Rubio and Paul even have. And Rubio’s gains have been pathetic, and Paul is a non factor now.

[DoughtyOne]

FR POSTING STATS
* * ARTICLES PER CANDIDATE THIS LAST WEEK 08/22 - 08/28 * *

LINK

[SamAdams76]

Just checked out your FR Posting Stats link. Very interesting!

[spintreebob]

very interesting. I’m not on twitter. I don’t know anyone who is. I’m very much on email.

What % of voters are on twitter? What % of Republicans?

How do we know if twitter is representative of voters?

Rubio and Paul have far more followers than others. With Paul it can be explained that he attracts that type of people, which is evidence (if not proof) that twitter is not representative. Yet I’m a libertarian who knows many libertarians and I don’t know any of them to be on twitter. They talk about email in their emails. Less often they talk about facebook and youtube. They rarely talk about twitter or instagram.

What explains Rubio with so many followers?

[SE Mom]

Probably because Paul and Rubio are both current senators. At least that’s my guess.

[SamAdams76]

Very good questions.

Overall, I would say the % of Republicans on Twitter is small, when compared to Democrats. Let's face it, the Democrats have been crushing the Republicans on social media and this is the main reason Obama won two solid victories in 2008 (when social media first became a factor) and 2012.

In fact, it was the Obama campaign's skill at social media that allowed him to become the Democrat nominee in the first place. Hillary Clinton was running a more traditional campaign and she got completely blindsided by the Obama campaign - they simply did not see that train coming.

Through social media, you not only can dominate the youth vote but you can get them to the polls with a massive GOTV effort through tweets, texts and pings.

Back in 2008, it was only the "under 30" crowd that had a clue about social media. In 2016, it will be most of the "under 40" crowd and effective use of social media will be decisive.

That's why it annoys me when so many Republicans pooh-pooh social media and continue to run campaigns like it was 1988. Mitt Romney and John McCain's campaigns were utterly embarrassing in this respect. They came across to most young voters as out of touch douchebags. Only Sarah Palin was making effective use of it among conservatives - and in 2012, she wasn't running.

Donald Trump appears to have turned that around. Now you have Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina, among others, doing some great stuff with social media during this campaign. I am more confident in the success of the Republican nominee this go around as a result.

I think Marco Rubio and Ron Paul "get it" in this respect and this was why their Twitter followers were comparatively high. If you notice however, their momentum in August hasn't been that great. I wish I had earlier numbers to compare it to. Will be interesting to see how they fare when I reset the numbers on Tuesday (Sep 1).

[Terry L Smith]

The author did a nice job for those that are enamoured with all other forms of communication, but face to face.

Twattered, Mugbook, Instayawn, Pin-to-rest, somehow, in their own fashions, just aren’t my kind of pickles.

[SamAdams76]

Twattered, Mugbook, Instayawn, Pin-to-rest, somehow, in their own fashions, just aren’t my kind of pickles.

And that attitude is precisely the reason the Republicans had their heads handed to them in 2008 and 2012.

Fortunately we have more savvy people running this year.

[spintreebob]

So why would a senator have more followers than a governor?

A winner needs a COMPLETE game: A ground game, an air game, defense, special teams. (Thank God football season finally arrived.)

In both red and blue states the trend has been to make precincts bigger with the polling place farther away from home and less well known to the voter. This has mostly been the result of Chris Dodd’s HAVA-Help Americans Vote Act which has been consciously implemented by “friends of Chris Dodd’ to change the paradigm of “all politics is local”.

It is also the reason why voter id has become more important. Previously, the same election judges manned many successive elections in small precincts of their neighbors. They personally knew 90% of the voters walking in.

Now in precincts 5 times larger and no clarity of neighborhood, people often go to the wrong polling place and often are voting for St Rep (or even Congress) in a district in which they do not live.

The election judges have to handle more people and thus handle them more quickly with Friends-of-Chris-Dodd software that is intentionally slower so the lines back up and forces election officials to push everyone through the line with no check of voter registration or identity.

(It reminds me of crossing the border at rush hour border crossers are pushed through with no time to check IDs.)

So into this mess comes social media with the ability to provide a public service of good citizenship...namely educating voters on WHERE their polling place is located.

[SE Mom]

Indeed- and even more with constantly changing demographics.

I don’t use Facebook or Twitter, but I understand their power and usefulness. If the Republicans are unable to learn to use these tools constantly they’re going to get smacked by younger voters.