U.S. Presidential Candidates on Twitter: Who’s Got Momentum?

Didit Editorial

9 years ago

June 25, 2015: The U.S. presidential horse race is officially under way, so it’s not too early to start analyzing the performance of each candidate’s social media presence. On Twitter, there are already clear indications that certain candidates are breaking away, although it isn’t clear at this early juncture whether such Twitter momentum can be sustained.

Today we look at raw Follower count gains among U.S. Presidential Candidates, both declared and undeclared, , along with the greatest percentage of Follower growth. The first metric indicates how many new Followers piled on in the past five weeks; the second shows how this gain compares with a candidate’s pre-existing audience size.

Raw Follower count gain: Winner: Hillary Clinton; Runner-up: Donald Trump

Hillary Clinton added the most (210,000) Followers in the sampled time period, putting her way ahead of the pack. But candidate and Twitter favorite Donald Trump added a very respectable 140,000 people to his social stream, followed by Bernie Sander’s smaller but still signfiicant 66,000. All announced their candidates in the past five weeks, suggesting that widespread media coverage of these announcements caused a mass follower pile-on.

Percentage Follower count gain: Winner: Bernie Sanders; Runner-up: Jeb Bush

Bernie Sander’s addition of 140,000 followers put him on top here, with a 21 percent Follower gain. Again, it appears that Sander’s announcement caused lots of people to take action. Jeb Bush’ addition of 187,000 Followers to his camp allowed him to eke out a 13 percent gain, followed closely by Martin O’Malley. Candidates Mike Pence and Susana Martinez added zero Followers during the past five weeks; for reasons that cannot be explained, Brian Schwitzer actually lost Followers during this same period.

Warning: these numbers will change

Popularity on Twitter and a given candidate’s success at adding Followers is no certain proxy for success at the ballot box. November 2016 is still a long way down the road. But it’s still s interesting to watch the media interaction effects at work. It appears that candidate announcements — of which there will be more in the future — appear to have a major impact on Twitter Follower gains, making Twitter a reliable barometer of American mindshare. It remains to be seen whether negative news (for example, campaign gaffes, of which there will likely be more than a few in the near future) — will cause Follower counts, or at least the rate of Follower additions, to decline in response.