THE ECHO: Weekly Roundup of Political Discussion on Twitter (March 8–14, 2018)

Parkland Inspires a National Student Walkout Day, Rex Tillerson Gets Tweet-Fired, Conor Lamb Wins #PA18 Special Election, Putin and Stormy Daniels Cause Trouble for Trump

Last week’s gun control breakthrough in the Florida legislature, signed by the governor, found a national audience this week as aligned organizations helped promote a national school walkout to push for federal laws protecting students, teachers, and staff. The hotly contested special election in Pennsylvania was somewhat resolved on Tuesday with a victory for Conor Lamb, which I luke-warmly predicted based on edges in fundraising, polling, and Twitter volume since January. In other news, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was unceremoniously fired via tweet, capping a short and unhappy tenure in the Trump administration. We also have some news to report on Vladimir Putin and Stormy Daniels.

Parkland Spurs National Protests

From a political management perspective, it has been fascinating to see how the Parkland community reacted to the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School. Weeks after the shooting, Parkland not only remains in the news, but the Twitter conversation grew 12 percent from last week to 1,164,272 related tweets at the same time that other related topics and hashtags are growing. The core issue of gun control and specific proposals were in 642,649 tweets over the past week, a significant number despite a decrease of 26% percent.

On the heels of the unexpected legislative compromise in Florida activists were assisted by EMPOWER, a group that organized the women’s marches, to encourage students to walk out of school on March 14, which thousands across the country did. Related hashtags including #NationalWalkoutDay, #17minutes, #EnoughWalkout, as well as other variations were in 921,326 tweets over the past week, up 1,862 percent from last week. This is ahead of next week’s March for Our Lives rallies, which are expected to host over a half million people in Washington D.C., alone.

Acting immediately and having the students lead (not parents or adult-led organizations), appears to have been an effective strategy. This neutralized the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) regular strategy of waiting out gun-assisted massacres to assert second amendment rights. The NRA’s Twitter volume was down 29 percent from last week and was drowned out when you consider that the walkout and the gun control conversation together involved more than 2.2 million tweets. That said, the NRA still attracted 1,293,700 related tweets.

The conversation on Twitter in the United States around those issues engulfed several members of Congress including embattled Republican incumbent Virginia-10 Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock (+33 percent from last week) was attacked as “Bumpstock Barbara” and as one of the top recipients of money from the NRA, a difficult position to maintain in a district that is trending toward Democrats.

PA-18 Special Election

Conor Lamb’s upset in the Pennsylvania 18 special election on Tuesday night was close enough and there remain outstanding some provisional ballots that the Associated Press still has not called it. The 627-vote win was within a .5% margin so Republican Rick Saccone could call for a recount. Still, for our purposes, the win was likely foreseeable as a combination of 5:1 candidate fundraising, 3:1 Twitter volume, and trending polling indicated that Lamb would win by more than he did. In the final week, Lamb was in 795,249 tweets (up 1,264 percent from last week) and Saccone was in 487,574 tweets (up 1,898 percent).

What held the race together may have been President Trump’s late support in-person and on Twitter. But regardless of what we saw before the election, it is clear that the bar is now set at 20, the number of points Trump won the district by in 2016. This opens up the November map for Democrats in ways they could not foresee before Tuesday night even if PA-18 itself will not be constituted in the same way due to court-mandated redistricting which may lead to both Lamb and Saccone serving in next year’s Congress.

Political Death by Tweet

This week featured one more bad moment for former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who never seemed to find favor or confidence from his boss since joining the administration. Tillerson was fired by President Trump on Twitter (“congratulations to all!”) before having a final conversation with the nation’s chief executive. Tillerson went out in a blaze of Twitter-fueled glory with 1,023,135 related tweets (up 529 percent from the previous week). We agree with the president in his expectation that Tillerson will be “much happier” in retirement. We do not expect to see Tillerson in The ECHO moving forward unless he happens to write a book about his experience (coming soon: James Comey).

Vladimir Putin and Stormy Daniels

Russian President Vladimir Putin and adult film star Stormy Daniels continue to make things difficult for President Trump, who was in 5,511,758 related tweets, up nine percent from last week. Putin was up 42 percent (675,827 tweets) from the previous week on a related of issues including the killing of former spies in the U.K. and comments about the 2016 presidential election. Daniels was up 115 percent (625,394 tweets) in advance of the release of her “60 Minutes” interview and revelations that another Trump Organization lawyer was involved in the contested hush-money arrangement to keep an alleged relationship with the president out of public view.

“The ECHO” is a publication of The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM). This edition covers political activity on Twitter in the United States March 1–7, 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 edition of The ECHO Quarterly, summarizing three big things this research can teach campaigns and elected officials. I presented additional research on the #metoo movement at GSPM’s conference “Reimagining Disruption” on February 28 (download here).