Drew Margolin, a professor of communication at Cornell University who studies human dynamics through social media, isn’t just tracking how the electorate is reacting to candidates in one single moment via Twitter, but how they have been reacting since the beginning of the primaries. This historical data gives Drew and his collaborator Yu-Ru Lin, University of Pittsburgh, a unique window into changing sentiment within a party about candidates and topics, as well as across party affiliations.
For example, how are early Trump or Hillary supporters reacting differently from more general Republicans and Democrats who originally favored another candidate? What about those who may have been #NeverTrump or #NeverHillary? And what does it mean for Election 2016?
Margolin will be dissecting the data from these randomly selected computational focus groups during both National Conventions, the Presidential Debates, and the National Election.
Margolin analyzed day one and two of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, and crunched the Twitter statistics during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Insights from the night first and second nights of the RNC convention, the make up of their computational focus groups, and general thoughts on using Twitter as a sentiment barometer can be found here. Coverage of Ted Cruz’s non-endorsement can be found here, and analysis of Donald Trump’s acceptance speech here.
Democratic National Convention: Night 3
The first two nights of the DNC left two important questions for the Democrats:
- Can the party unify?
- Can the party get behind Hillary?
Results from our Twitter groups showed a strong affirmative answer to question one. The second question, however, remains open.
Can the Party Unify?
Night 1 showed a divided party, with many Bernie supporters using #BernieOrBust. It also showed little enthusiasm for and engagement with Hillary herself. Night 2 showed less contentiousness, but little unity. Hillary’s supporters were engaged and enthusiastic for her, but Bernie’s supporters remained engaged and enthusiastic for him. There was little that the whole party could agree on. Even negative sentiment toward Trump, while generally present, was not strong in all of our groups.
This changed dramatically Wednesday night. For the first time during the DNC, and only the second time during either convention (Ivanka Trump), we observed a speaker getting significant, positive attention from both their nominee’s followers and their nominee’s resistors. The Democrats actually had three such speakers tonight: Joe Biden, Tim Kaine, and Barack Obama.
The response to Biden was most impressive. Biden spoke before the major networks prime time coverage began at 10 p.m. ET, yet still received attention — about 5% of the tweets from our groups. This is equivalent to the attention received by Obama and Kaine, speaking in prime time later that night, and a greater share of the attention than Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren received in prime time on Monday. It is also more than any Republican received last week other than Ted Cruz or Trump himself.
The attention was also decidedly positive. In 5 out of 6 groups, tweets that mentioned Biden contained relatively more positive language. In particular, Biden received positive tweets from both Hillary Dumpers — people who switched their Twitter following from Hillary to Sanders — and the Defectors to Hillary — who switched the other way. The only group where Biden was not tweeted positively to statistically significant degree was the Bernie Holdouts.
Fortunately for the Democrats, Tim Kaine was received positively by this group (the Holdouts). In fact, Kaine was tweeted with relatively positive language in 4 out of 6 groups, including the Hillary Avoiders — people who had dropped their original Democrat but not yet followed Hillary. Only the two groups that used to follow Hillary, but dropped her (Hillary Dumpers and Candidate Avoiders), showed a neutral rather than positive sentiment toward Kaine. Fortunately again, Obama also had the Dumpers covered, and received positive sentiments from 4 out of 6 groups.
Some other potentially good news for the Democrats is the quantity of attention paid to Kaine. Kaine was mentioned in about 4% of tweets on average across the groups, much more than Mike Pence (about 1.5%). As I mentioned that night, the low attention to Pence may be part of the Trump campaign strategy, so it is hard to say this is a negative for Trump. But to the extent to which Clinton hopes to rely on Kaine to make her case, he appears capable of drawing the attention needed.
What made Kaine so effective? Addressing this question would require substantial research, but a quick clue can be drawn from the response to his mocking Trump’s tendency to say “believe me.” Across all of our groups, this phrase appeared in 63 tweets, more than the anti-candidate hashtags. The phrase was tweeted substantially by both groups loyal to and resistant to Hillary, and was used quite frequently relative to the attention Kaine got overall. For example, a little less than 1 in 7 of tweets from both the Defectors to Hillary and Bernie Holdouts that mention Kaine use this phrase (another similarly effective phrase appeared to be Bloomberg’s “God Help Us”, which received almost as many tweets as “believe me” on a smaller base of attention to Bloomberg).
Some other indications of party unity are the fact that Sanders himself received little attention, attracting fewer than 1% of tweets in each group, and that the use of #BernieOrBust or #NeverHillary hashtags declined to less than a half percent in all groups, including the Hillary Dumpers. All groups were also unified in their use of relatively negative sentiment when talking about Trump, something the Republican groups were able to achieve for Hillary each night of the RNC.
Can the Party Get Behind Hillary?
So overall, the tweets indicate a party that agrees about who they like and who they don’t. But the evidence is less clear for whether one of the people they “like” is Hillary herself. Last night, both the Defectors to Hillary and the Hillary Acceptors tweeted with relatively positive language about her, but no other groups did. Tonight these groups continued to be positive for her, and were joined by the Hillary Avoiders — people who have unfollowed another Democrat but not yet followed Hillary. This is the first evidence of a group that does not follow Hillary Clinton tweeting positively about her.
But the Hillary Dumpers — people who unfollowed her — and the Bernie Holdouts — people who follow Bernie and have yet (or may never) follow her — have yet to express relatively positive feelings about her. As described above, each of these groups liked at least one of Biden, Kaine, and Obama tonight. So they appear receptive to the party. But it looks like she will have to earn it from them.
Thursday: can she do it?
- Drew
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