Primary Season is Off to the Races on Twitter
THE ECHO: Weekly Roundup of Political Discussion on Twitter (May 17–23, 2018)
With congressional primary season in full swing we are taking a step back from the news of the day to focus in on political institutions and competitive races where there is an incumbent. Trump dominates all four national political institutions we cover, both leading political parties and both chambers of Congress.
Incumbent Senators Dean Heller (R-NV) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) appear to be in the most trouble given their elevated interest levels on Twitter. In the House, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA-48) has been the incumbent drawing the most attention since early March, a similar indication of danger.
Institutions
This week’s primaries drew significant attention in news media and on Twitter, significantly increasing chatter about the Republican and Democrat parties (37 percent and 25 percent, respectively) as activists turned out to the polls. As the “blue wave” has receded and the generic ballot has tightened, so have posts about both parties, gaining relative parity this week in terms of Twitter volume.
Since late August, Trump has dominated the national political landscape and the chart below demonstrates this clearly by weekly Twitter volume. By the numbers, Trump is averaging about 6.4 million related tweets while both parties and both ends of Capitol Hill combined attract about 30 percent fewer weekly posts. This is the bully pulpit at work led by someone who knows how to leverage the platform, personally and authentically.
Senate Races
With the decisions by incumbent Republican Senators Jeff Flake (AZ) and Bob Corker (TN) to not seek reelection, we have focused on nine seemingly competitive races based on our reading of political handicappers such as the Cook Political Report, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and Inside Elections.
Sen. Dean Heller’s (R-NV) weekly average Twitter volume of 12,079 related posts is the most of any incumbent, followed by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) with 11,811 related posts, and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) with 11,067 related posts. Now with President Trump’s support Sen. Heller seems to have receded into the Twitter echo chamber while the announcement of Governor Rick Scott’s candidacy has spiked tweets about Sen. Bill Nelson.
Recent high tweet volume for Sen. Sherrod Brown is a reflection of his combative rollout for re-election against Rep. Jim Renacci. Interestingly, the hotly contested GOP primary to run against Sen. Joe Manchin (R-WV) resulted in relative calm for the incumbent, who was down 45 percent on Twitter since last week, despite (or perhaps because of) defeated primary GOP candidate Don Blankenship’s decision to run in the general election as a third-party candidate.
House Races
In addition to Speaker Paul Ryan, 38 Republicans have decided to forego reelection campaigns in 2018 while 18 Democrats have decided to also hit the House chamber exits. With so many endangered incumbents leaving we have narrowed the scope of our data for this week’s post.
Since the week of March 1–7, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA-48) is drawing the most volume on Twitter. With an average related post volume of 8,743, he is in a class by himself, way ahead of his Republican colleagues who draw only about 3,000 weekly posts such as Rep. Jason Lewis (MN-02) and Rep. Barbara Comstock (VA-10). While Rep. Mike Bost had one busy week on Twitter (March 8–14) because President Trump tweeted his support, he receded quickly back into the platform’s ether.
As the primary season continues to sort out who will be challenging the incumbents below, they are finding more traffic on Twitter coming their way.
This week it was Rep. John Culberson (R-TX-07), who was up 474 percent, as Lizzie Pannill Fletcher won the Democratic primary on the strength of her backing from Moms Demand Action Gun Sense. Rep. Culberson’s 3,310 related tweets over the past seven days appears garden variety on its surface but he was averaging only 822 per week.
What remains to be seen is whether or not low-tweet-volume incumbents like Culberson draw continued interest beyond their opponents’ primary victory spikes.
“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 May 10–16, 2018. 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.
