Posted on 02/02/2019 4:42:25 PM PST by SamAdams76
This is a monthly posting of Twitter follower growth for the past month for 2020 presidential candidates.
For those who are new to this, what I do here is take a snapshot of Twitter followers at end of each month for citizens who have either formally announced or notable people who show interest in running for president in the 2020 cycle. Then I stack rank by what the growth is month-over-month in Twitter followers.
This is very unscientific of course but I feel that Twitter growth in followers is a very strong indicator of candidate "velocity" and we certainly saw that in 2016, when it was Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and the eventual winner Donald Trump who month after month saw the highest growth in followers. My 2016 tracking showed "front-runners" like Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio with rather tepid Twitter follower growth months before they eventually dropped out of the race.
So I think this "unscientific" survey has some merit.
I am currently tracking 43 individuals for the 2020 Presidential Race but only the Top 20 make the cut for my monthly update.
I dropped several candidates from last month's tracking including Bill Kristol, Jeff Flake and Patrick Deval.
I also added a column that shows percentage growth of followers. I don't personally like this metric because it skews in favor of candidates who have comparatively few followers (see Howard Schultz as an example here) and disfavors candidates who have already built millions of followers. But many have requested it so here it is.
President Trump has gained over a million followers since 30 days ago - pretty impressive. However, "Pocahontas" Elizabeth Warren is coming on strong with over 115,000 new followers. You also see some momentum for candidates who just recently announced their formal entry into the race (i.e. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker).
Lot of activity since last month with many now either formally in the race or exploring it.
Still in the very early going here.
Thank You.
Ping List
Nice work. Thanks for the effort. I agree that there’s something to this.
Something that might skew things, is if a person decides to focus on FaceBook or another medium vs Twitter. They may remain low on Twitter, but have fairly good following elsewhere.
As long as thy have an account, or a follower has set one up for them, I suppose it wouldn’t matter.
I will tell you that on Instagram, Trump rocks. I was dumbfounded to see the amazing defense and support of him there.
It reminds me of FR in ways. There you get devout Leftists though, but people really hound them. One guy will post something and right away there are 5, 10, 50, 100+ responses trashing them.
Leftists are hated there.
Date in title modified at your request, Jan 2019 to Feb 2019.
Thank you!
Good work.
FWIW, I can think of some confounding variables that perhaps should be considered.
President Trump has as many followers as the rest put together. While much of that is a result of Trump's mastery of the medium; a lot of followers are there only to criticize. Recall that the courts prevented Trump from banning anyone from his account; so, we don't know how many subscribers are actually supporters.
It's likely that most of the subscribers to the various Dem accounts are supporters -- mainly because the account holder would be able to boot opponents off the list. We don't know how many are subscribers to multiple accounts -- that's likely to skew results. Also, the candidate's media strategy will affect results -- those, who care more about twitter will have more followers, all else being equal.
That said, we're talking about orders-of-magnitude differences; so, the numbers are likely a good indicator.
Hmmm. I may have to take a look at Instagram.
I liked the idea of supporting Trump there, but he’s got a lot there.
FR is where the heart is.
Bump
Oh yeah, not leaving here, just want to check out what that looks like. Who owns them?
Not sure who owns them...
Great job, Sam!
Any consideration to including H. Clinton and B. Obama (in addition to the Top 20)?
HC because she is reportedly not ruling it out yet - it would be interesting to see how UNpopular she remains.
BO because he is supposedly “so popular!” - it would be interesting to see how his “popularity” increases relative to Trump’s.
Thanks, good info sure a lot of work but appreciated here.
No John Kasich?
I’m tracking @JohnKasich but he dropped 874 followers last month and didn’t make my Top 20.
When do you think Terry McAuliffe is going to jump in?
If Crooked Hillary shows any interest in running, I'll put her on my tracking. But I'm thinking she's done in politics which is why so many women are jumping into the race this year.
McAuliffe was virtue-signaling on Twitter today (calling for Northum’s resignation) so I’m sure he’s testing the waters.
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