Over the past week, twitter users around the nation have been tweeting and retweeting for Georgia’s candidates for governor. Although the total number of tweets is constantly rising, as of 9pm Sunday night, over 1.3 million tweets have been made which mention either candidate. Keep in mind the possibility of crossover in any given tweet, as both candidates can be mentioned in tandem.
We first looked into the negative side in Stacey’s portion, which showed overwhelming support for the candidate, despite being negative. This wasn’t a failure of Crimson Hexagon however – instead it was a show of how frequently Republican values were speared while also praising the candidate.
Upon filtering the data and finding tweets mentioning only one of the candidates, we are left with a better picture of who is holding more of the conversation. Stacey Abrams holds almost 100,000 tweets over Brian Kemp’s 274,419 for a total of 366,796 tweets. But having more tweets than someone else doesn’t mean all that much. The conversation surrounding Abrams could be entirely against her, perhaps, for example: her political opponents are mentioning her as someone not to vote for. Diving a little further into the numbers reveals the opposite is the truth – sort of.
Unfortunately for Mr. Kemp, most of the negative conversation is about him – even the conversation that only mentions Ms. Abrams. When we first divided the data between the two candidates we found these sentiments:
Brian Kemp’s sentiment
Stacey Abrams’ sentiment
What struck us was the relative even amount of negative sentiment in both conversations, as well as the larger positive sentiment for Ms. Abrams. We first looked into the negative side in Stacey’s portion, which showed overwhelming support for the candidate, despite being negative. This wasn’t a failure of Crimson Hexagon however – instead it was a show of how frequently Republican values were speared while also praising the candidate.
On Brian Kemp’s side of the conversation, we saw the opposite happening. Users would directly criticize the candidate, other republican figures, as well as those supporting the candidate.
The election will come to a close this Tuesday and we will finally know the outcome. “Who will win?” is the question on everyone’s mind in this toss-up election. Although it’s unlikely Twitter have anything to do with who wins in this election, as citizens become more tech savvy, the social media site may have a finger closer to the pulse.
Analysis performed and post generated by SEE Suite intern James Ogletree.
