Border Backlash
THE ECHO: Weekly Roundup of Political Discussion on Twitter (June 14–20, 2018)
This week a crisis of his own making temporarily threw the King of Political Twitter into tactical retreat. President Trump’s policy of redesignating unauthorized border crossings as criminal acts had the effect of separating children from their parents, who were jailed pending their hearings. Widely circulated pictures and heartbreaking audio of the children sent Americans and the political system into a frenzy, which finally resulted in President Trump relenting with an executive order to reverse the policy despite blaming Democrats for the policy and congressional inaction.
Institutions
While tweets about President Trump were up only eight percent (about 7.9 million), the political parties became a flashpoint of contention on the platform. Tweets about the Democratic Party (about 1.6 million) were up 87 percent from the previous seven days while tweets about the Republican Party were up 54 percent (about 2.4 million).
What the data above mask is the significant spike in tweets about the United States Senate, from where most of the legislative action was being led. Chatter about the upper chamber increased 15 percent over the previous seven days to just over 55,000 related tweets. The House of Representatives, in contrast, saw lower tweet volume, down five percent on under 11,000 related posts.
Competitive Midterms
It is rare that all five of the Senate incumbents in toss-up races we’re tracking are up significantly from the previous week’s edition of The ECHO. Consider this week’s “Toss-Up Top Five,” most of whom are Democrats:
- Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-IN) +745%
- Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) +413%
- Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) +312%
- Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) +122%
- Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) +74%
Among the triple-digit increases all were due to the immigration policy crisis. With his tweet supporting the “Keep Families Together Act” Sen. Joe Donnelly was able to respond directly to this well-circulated tweet from platform Twitter leader Alyssa Milano, who prompted Manchin (in orange below) to cosponsor. Nelson’s related tweets spiked due to his denial of access to an immigrant holding center in Homestead, Florida, and post-executive order entry to tour the facility. Sen. Heller was also up on his “request” of Trump to stop separating children from parents at the border.
While the Senate was dealing the crisis institutionally, some members of the House saw their tweet volume spike on their activity related to legislation in process ahead of the executive order. As you can see below, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (CA-48-R) got somewhat of a reprieve on the platform as Rep. Will Hurd (TX-23-R, in dark blue below) saw the largest increase of our tracking of him since last summer, up 2,618 percent on close to 5,000 related tweets. His statement of opposition to the policy drove much of the increase.
The remainder of the Top Five tweet volume leaders were all involved in challenging President Trump on the family separation policy:
- Rep. Erik Paulsen’s (MN-03-R) opponent, Dean Phillips, challenged him to “draft a bill to cease the practice NOW.” Paulsen was up 197% on about 8,000 tweets.
- Rep. Mike Coffman (CO-06-R) said he would introduce a bill from Democrat Sen. Diane Feinstein in the House to end the crisis. Coffman was up 281 percent on about 6,600 tweets.
- This week’s leader from the House California Republican Jeff Denham introduced a more comprehensive bill with GOP colleagues. Denham was up 101 percent on about 5,000 tweets.
- Rep. Barbara Comstock (VA-10-R) spoke out against the administration’s “zero-tolerance” child separation policy. Comstock was down 72 percent off her primary victory but remained in the Top Five, signaling contiuing interest and potential political trouble as we get closer to Election Day.
By week’s end, President Trump reluctantly ended the policy his administration executed and it looks unlikely for anything to get through Congress by the time this posts on Friday allowing for the potential for this to resurface in the future should President Trump, or a future president, revoke his executive order and reinstate the policy.
“The ECHO” is a publication of The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM). It is funded by a donation by GSPM alumnus William H. Madaway and through a reduced-cost license to Crimson Hexagon. This edition covers political activity on Twitter in the United States June 14–20. All data from this post, as well as our methodology, is available on our PEORIA Project website and weekly by email (subscribe here). Also available on our website is the first two editions of The ECHO Quarterly, summarizing the key principles this research can teach campaigns and elected officials.
