Twitter bot and propaganda accounts for Jeanne Ives ramp up their activity on the eve of the Illinois primaries

The Illinois governor primary elections are scheduled to begin in just a few hours. The primaries for both the Democratic and Republican parties are tighter tonight than predicted by political analysts at the start of the election cycle. Once far ahead, both the leading Democratic candidate JB Pritzker and the Republican incumbent Bruce Rauner are dealing with surging opponents. Neither Pritzker nor Rauner are a sure lock to win.

Supporters for the five major candidates (Democrats Daniel Biss, Chris Kennedy, and JB Pritzker, and Republicans Jeanne Ives and Bruce Rauner) have been using Twitter to express their favoritism for their respective candidates. This activity has begun to ramp up in the election’s final hours, with hundreds of tweets and retweets a day expressing support for the gubernatorial candidates.

However, the amount of tweets and retweets mentioning Republican candidate Jeanne Ives continues to be much greater than her opponents. While every poll has her expected to lose to the incumbent Governor Rauner (a recent Ogden & Fry poll has her behind seven percent), she had more than twice the amount of mentions on Twitter than Governor Rauner on March 19th, the day before the election.

More than two thousand tweets and retweets mention Jeanne Ives on the day before the election. Furthermore, there are more tweets and retweets mentioning Jeanne Ives than any of the other main candidates combined.

So how is Jeanne Ives getting her mentions on Twitter? Over the past twenty four hours, more tweets and retweets have come from Twitter bot and propaganda accounts than accounts directly interacting with Jeanne Ives’s official Twitter account.

Starting on St. Patrick’s Day, more than 1500 tweets and retweets have come from @MAGANinaJo, a Twitter previously identified as a bot account.

Despite the Ives’ campaign claiming that they do not know about the Twitter bots and that they are not affiliated with the state representative, the campaign is surely enjoying the benefits from her massive Twitter support even after my original article.

Could the benefits from bot and propaganda accounts translate to an unexpected upset in the primaries for Jeanne Ives? Combined with her tightening poll numbers, I believe that she has a much greater chance than the average challenger to an incumbent candidate to win the Republican primaries.