Election 2016: By-the-Emojis

We’re 60 days away from the election, and journalists are glued to polls to gauge who will have the edge in November.

So I know exactly what you’re thinking — how can we gauge the mood of the electorate, using only emojis?

The sentiment analysis of the future.

See, back in February, when Facebook “Reactions” were released, some people were skeptical. Many thought that it would just provide more clutter. But I knew better. I knew that Facebook Reactions would soon become the most effective way to gauge the thoughts of the most powerful nation on Earth.

Forget pollsters. Forget FiveThirtyEight and Nate Silver’s ungodly future-sight power. Forget those caterpillars that apparently predict elections. Here’s the real story:

Okay okay okay. Tongue-in-cheekiness aside, I’ve been curious about candidates’ Facebook presence for a while. The chart above is my own. I took a sample of each of the candidates Facebook posts from August 2016, and listed the amount of each reaction they received.

The darker trend lines going horizontally across the graph represent the size that each reaction should be if all candidates got the same breakdowns of reactions to their Facebook posts. Roughly speaking, for every 1000 reactions, this would mean the candidate should get 920 Likes, 57 Loves, 5 Laughs, 4 Wows, 2 Sad Faces, and 12 Angry Faces.

The reaction emojis are sized according to how many of those reactions the candidate received compared to that average.

Here’s 5 things we can tell from it:

1. Hillary’s supporters are more likely to make use of the variety of new reactions available (12%). Jill Stein’s supporters are the least likely (3%).

Both candidates drew Angry reactions for posts about each other.

2. Both major-party candidates draw the largest proportion of “angry” reactions. Some of these angry reactions are likely due to posts they write about each other, to remind their supporters of their dislike for the other candidate.

3. But in other cases, the angry reaction face has been used as a “dislike” button by supporters of the opposition, or supporters who disagree with a particular plank of their candidate’s platform.

Using the Angry reaction as a “dislike” button proxy.

4. Hillary Clinton has the largest proportion (by far) of “sad” reactions, often from posts describing personal stories of undocumented immigrant families in the United States.

5. Between the 3rd Party Candidates, Gary Johnson excels at posts that make his supporters laugh. But is this due to the humor of his posts?

Or is it due to people dismissing his candidacy as laughable?

I suppose the answer is still up for debate. And that’s the limit of my emoji-reading of America.

Join us next week when we discover the insights that candidates’ tweet length tell us about their polling in swing states! (hint: none)