Congress and the Presidential Election: the Power of Negative Tweets
By: Nir Yungster
Tags: 2016 Election, Politics, Congress, Twitter, Data Science

Congress and the Presidential Election: the Power of Negative Tweets

During the presidential primary season, many observers suggested that should Donald Trump win his party’s nomination, a Republican would likely mount an independent campaign to help prevent Trump from ascending to the Presidency. Of course, it turns out that the only such candidate is little-known Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer who up until launching his campaign in August was a senior staffer in the House. As McMullin tells it, he urged likeminded House members to run but became convinced that no one would do so. “They thought it was too risky. They didn’t want to risk their current seats in Congress. They didn’t want to risk the criticism, and the humiliation, and all of that. I urged them to do it, and they would not do it.” Those same representatives were supportive of McMullin’s motivations though, and at least one suggested that McMullin run himself.

The matter isn’t simply that no elected Republican chose to mount a challenge to Trump, though. In fact, the vast majority chose to support him as their nominee. While roughly a dozen House Republicans have publicly rescinded support for Trump since the tape of him bragging about assaulting women became public this month, prior to that only a handful of the 247 House Republicans said they would not vote for him. That stands in contrast to the significant #NeverTrump movement and the sizable list of prominent Republicans openly opposing their party’s nominee.

Given that House members regularly have self-preservation in mind, I wondered more broadly how that might be reflected in what they‘ve publicly said about the presidential election. To investigate, I turned to Twitter, where I collected tweets from every Republican and Democratic member of the House since the Iowa Caucuses in February — roughly 160,000 tweets in total. Of those, I focused on the 4% that mentioned Trump, Hillary Clinton, or President Obama.

Check out this interactive tool to explore for yourself how Congress has been tweeting about the presidential election.

Here are a couple key takeaways from what I found:

Congress members tweet much more about the opposing party’s nominee than their own

Since February, Democrats have tweeted about 3 times as often about Trump than about Clinton, while Republicans have tweeted more than 4 times as often about Clinton than Trump. For tweets after each party’s convention, the disparity grows further, with Democrats tweeting 4.5 times more about Trump, and Republicans 6 times more about Clinton.

These “negative tweets” in a sense mirror TV ads for presidential elections, where the volume of negative ads far outweighs positive ones. In fact the fraction of negative TV ads has been increasing over the last few presidential elections: in 2004, 58% of candidate ads were negative; in 2008, 69%; and in 2012, over 80%. Additionally, when it comes to reelection-focused House members, given voters’ largely unfavorable view of both candidates, representatives may well be calculating that it helps their reelection bids more to run against the opposing party’s nominee rather than in alignment with their own.

Negative tweets (those about the opposing party’s nominee) also gain much more popularity on Twitter

Let’s look at the case of House Democrats. Not only are they tweeting much more about Trump than Clinton, but their Trump tweets tend to get many more retweets and likes than their Clinton tweets — about 4–5 times as many. Similarly, Republican tweets mentioning Clinton typically get double the retweets as compared to when they mention Trump.

In other words, negative tweeting is not only more common among House members, but is also more effective at spreading on Twitter and reaching more people. Why might this be? For one, scientists studying political ads have found that negative ads tend to be more memorable than positive ones, so it’s reasonable to expect that may hold true on Twitter as well. It may also be that when House members tweet about their own party’s candidate, they do so with less full-throated conviction because of the political consequences of too-closely aligning with their own nominee. As a result, the tweets might be more mundane compared to negative ones which are politically uncomplicated to compose and carry a more enthusiastic message.

Republican House members tweet A LOT more about President Obama than Democrats do

Since February, House Republicans have tweeted 7 times as often as Democrats about Obama (and his eponymous policies), further fitting the trend of predominantly negative campaigning. Interestingly though, while Republicans tweet more frequently about the President than about Clinton (3x more), such tweets are only typically half as popular on Twitter as their Clinton tweets — perhaps a sign that attacks on Obama resonate less with voters compared to fresher attacks on Clinton.

Of course, negative tweets about your own party’s nominee draw lots of attention too

Of the five most retweeted House Republican tweets about Trump this election season, four were negative in nature. Here are a couple:

Such sentiments explain how it’s possible for someone like Evan McMullin to in a matter of weeks go from complete anonymity and limited resources to having a legitimate shot at winning electoral votes. Who knows what might have been had McMullin convinced a well known, better-funded Republican to mount a challenge instead.