Through Twitter, a window into who the favorite presidential candidates are
By: Michelle Inaba
Tags: Technology Trends, Data Journalism, Social Media, US Politics, Elections

Through Twitter, a window into who the favorite presidential candidates are

Twitter might be able to provide an insight into what the public opinion about the presidential candidates is in real time. If the primaries were today, we would likely see Hillary Clinton running against Ted Cruz in the general elections, based on how much ‘buzz’ they generate on Twitter.

The key is to look into the amount of times candidates are mentioned in the tweets, or their ‘volume.’ Research has shown that volume is more important than the content of the tweet in showing who is creating the most public interest. Public interest as seen through Twitter ‘buzz’ is an indicator that the candidate is already viewed as a likely winner in a race, which is the main reason both supporters and opponents would be tweeting about the candidate.

“We took Twitter mentions to indicate the level of attention, or potentially enthusiasm, that the candidate was generating,” said Johan Bollen, professor of Informatics and Computing at the Indiana University and author of a study on the use of Twitter to predict political behavior. “And this seems to be predictive with respect to the outcome of the elections.”

The Democratic Party has an incumbent candidate, Clinton, who so far is considered the most likely nominee for the party. The Republican Party has no incumbents though, and it is here that Twitter might come in handy in monitoring the development of the race.

Nationwide, Clinton and Cruz are leading the race on the Twitter sphere as the candidates with the most volume. Clinton’s mentions account for about 29 percent of the total of tweets, whereas Cruz has about 20 percent. Marco Rubio comes in third place, with about 17 percent of the total mentions. For the Democrats, Clinton does not seem to have any real adversary so far, as Bernie Sanders has only nine percent of mentions, which shows that he is not being really seen as a candidate with potential to win. This does not come as a surprise as Clinton is more known to the general public, given that she already ran in the 2008 Democratic primary race, besides her long history in government, including being First Lady and Secretary of State.

“Familiarity is a positive because people innately come to like things that feel familiar,” said Pamela Rutledge, director at the Media Psychology Research Center. “The high volume and frequency also makes a candidate’s name easier to recall.”

“It comes down to awareness,” said a planner at SS+K, a marketing and communications agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Because Hillary has the highest name recognition, she’s a lightning rod for both favorable and unfavorable tweets.”

For the Republican Party, it is not as simple. The party is internally divided right now, as seen by the many candidates stepping in for the nomination, with many unknown to the general public. This division is reflected on the overall mentions of candidates on Twitter: nobody has a clear advantage. In the total volume of tweets generated by the Republican Party, the four candidates taking the lead have very close rates: Cruz, Rubio, Rand Paul, and Carly Fiorina.

“This happens periodically to parties that don’t have incumbents,” said Fabio Rojas, professor of Sociology at the Indiana University. “And when there’s no incumbent, a lot of people try to step in, and they try to control the field, and right now nobody is controlling it because everybody is stepping in, which means that the attention is being chopped off in very small bits. It’s like a clown-car, with all these clowns in it.”

If the race were today, we would see Clinton as the Democratic nominee, but it isn’t clear who would win the nomination for the Republican Party. Whereas Cruz generates more public interest on Twitter nationwide, Rubio is ahead in the early primary states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada). Winning in those states could change the tone of the race, swaying a candidate to an advantage in gaining the nomination. Clinton is also ahead of everybody else in the early primary states, accounting for 59 percent of the mentions.

All of the candidates, with the exception of Rubio, have seen fluctuations in their volumes of Twitter mentions, which decreased and increased. Rubio was the only candidate who presented a steady growth in public interest, regardless of the new runners in the race.

His steady growth in tweet volume might mean that he is growing in the public eye offline as well, as a candidate with potential to win the GOP nomination in the early primary states. According to Joseph Di Grazia, professor of Political Sociology at Dartmouth College, “the volume of tweets about a candidate relative to that of his or her opponent is pretty highly correlated with electoral victory.” If Rubio wins the election in the early states, the race might change at the national level, placing him as a more likely nominee than Cruz.

Twitter volumes matter because they represent public interest, or buzz, and that might reflect the public opinion offline because people tend to talk about candidates they perceive as already winners, or highly likely to win.

“You’re not going to spend time on people who are going to lose,” Rojas said. “You always spend time on people who’s going to win. You pay attention to winners even if you hate them.”

“Ultimately it’s about driving influence and that can be measured by the number of people reached, the number that engage, how influential that audience is and also the volume of conversation the candidate is ultimately driving,” said a digital strategist at SS+K, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

According to researchers, the sentiment of the tweet — whether it is positive or negative, does not matter as much as the volume. Negative tweets about a candidate mean that people are talking about that candidate, and they are doing so because they perceive him or her as a possible winner.

“Candidates who are seen as threatening or as likely to win attract a lot of negative attention from supporters of their opponents,” Di Grazia said. “People mostly ignore weaker candidates who are seen unlikely to win. In other words, attracting negative attention is often a sign of strength.”

“People who win in politics tend to generate both negative and positive sentiments simultaneously,” Rojas said.

Additionally, analyzing tweets sentiments in relation to politics has some limitations. According to Bollen, “the problem with sentiment analysis is essentially that it is based on the wording of the tweet.” Tweets do not follow proper grammar, and programs that analyze them would have to be able to read into the Twitter language.

“I’m skeptical about the reliability of the results as tweets are so short, so context dependent and often use irregular spellings and abbreviations,” Di Grazia said. “I think overall volume is a simpler and less problematic measure.”

“Sentiment is always a tricky thing to measure using digital tools, as algorithms aren’t sophisticated enough to actually understand emotion outside of prescriptive phrases or words such as ‘love, admire, hate,’ and certainly can’t comprehend sarcasm,” the digital strategist at SS+K said.

Regardless of the difficulties, Twitter seems to be a tool with a lot of potential in helping us understand what is going on in society at the grassroots level, and in real time. It mirrors what is going on offline. In the case of the primary race, it will only show the person who is generating debate offline, as people will be talking about that person online.

“Social media has information that is highly valuable,” Rojas said. “You can follow what people are thinking on a minute-by-minute basis.”

“With Twitter, what I think is really useful is to get sort of a bottoms-up, grassroots indicator of what’s happening in the population,” Bollen said. “That’s even more important than deciding if this candidate is going to win the elections.”

If Rubio continues to present a steady growth in Twitter public interest, especially in the early primary states, this might be an indication that his persona is growing among the electorate, and that he could be the winner of the GOP nomination. It is very early in the race, though, and many things can still happen that could change the balance on the Republican side, such as Jeb Bush’s entry later on. Even Clinton, who is so far the favorite, might have her position threatened depending on who enters the race later.

“It’s an evolving landscape and relatively newcomers might grow into sure winners over time,” Bollen said.