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.
First up: The Republican National Convention.
Nights 1 & 2:
To start, a few thoughts on why Twitter: Observing Twitter dynamics gives us a window on political communication behavior we didn’t have previously. The basic premise of the convention telecast, as well as the televised debates, is that people pay attention to what is said and this informs their political judgments—who they might vote for—and statements—what they express to others.
Prior to social media, what “people pay attention to” was very, very hard to measure, as was any change in their behavior as a result. Nielsen ratings measured general “did you watch” for demographic groups, and surveys of attitudes always happen at the earliest the next day. So we’re left to guess about what exactly “happened last night.” You see the pundits speculating about this all of the time. They’ll say “here in the arena that got the crowd fired up, but I don’t think people at home cared.” Or they’ll say “Chris Christie was the star of the night.” How do they know? What measures of the relevant audiences are they using? Twitter is not perfect by any means, but it at least provides some information about what people actually pay attention to.
Now on to the four groups I’m currently tracking:
- Defectors to Trump: Those who followed another candidate but have since defected to Trump;
- Trump Dumpers: Those who used to follow Trump and don’t any longer;
- Trump Avoiders: Those who follow or have followed other GOP candidates but have never followed Trump, and;
- Candidate Avoiders: Those who used to follow at least 1 GOP candidate.
Trump Dumpers are talking about him, but they’re participating much less in the designated hashtag or talking about the convention per se. This reflects Trump’s ability to draw attention of any kind. It’s also consistent with some evidence for how Twitter works for political discussion generally, namely, that it draws mainly critics. For example, Obama’s speeches often create mostly negative (anti-Obama) Twitter activity. This seems to be a function of Twitter—it’s where people go to complain (for politics, anyway).
The Trump Defectors—people who used to follow another GOP candidate and now follow Trump—talk substantially more about Hillary Clinton. In fact, they talk about Hillary Clinton (10%) as much as they talk about Trump (11%). This suggests that Trump Defectors are either people who came over to Trump because they hate Hillary, and see this as the only way to stop her; or are buying into the theme of last night’s speeches, which attacked her.
The Trump Avoiders are in the middle, but the simple analysis from last night suggests they are much closer to the Trump Defectors, which implies they are more on board than not. They attended to the same speakers/politicians and to the convention as a whole in a similar way. The only difference was they focused less on Hillary Clinton.
- Drew
For media interviews contact:
Ellen Leventry
Office: 607.255.2722
Cell: 607.793.1441
eel2 [at] cornell.edu
Kathleen Corcoran
Office: 202-434-8036
Cell: 607-882-3782
Kmc327 [at] cornell.edu
