Once again, I’m going to add up the Facebook and Twitter followers for each Senate candidate here in North Carolina, come up with a ‘score’ and see if we can spot any big changes. Can an analysis of social media spot new developments taking place below the surface? Perhaps.
Changes from last time: Bill Flynn dropped out of the race, and Edward Kryn got in. Since this is Mr. Kryn’s first full month in the race, we won’t be able to do a comparison from last month. Let’s do this, once again, the last before the filing period:
1. Dr. Greg Brannon (64,928 + 2,721 = 67,649 +1,164
2. Speaker Thom Tillis (47,978 + 5,638 = 53,616) +6,067
3. Sen. Kay Hagan (47,925 + 4,939 = 52,864 +3,920
4. Rev. Mark Harris (2,155 + 1,624 = 3,779 +761
5. Heather Grant (702 + 1,453 = 2,155) +173
6. Former Mayor Ted Alexander (825 + 343 = 1,168) +743
7. Dr. Edward Kryn (78 + 19 = 97) N/A
(First number is Facebook followers, second is Twitter folds, the part in bold is the ‘score’, and the last number represents change in that score from last month.)
Once again, we find from the rankings there are two separate tiers: there’s a Brannon/Tillis/Hagan tier and an ‘everyone else’ tier. Since last month, Tillis has moved into second place in social media follows, besting Kay Hagan. Tillis being on the air has probably helped in this regard. Tillis also added the most new followers. Again, being on TV helps.
It’s the Momentumeter! We’ll use it to calculate percentage change from last month, and see who has the most ‘momentum’! The candidate with the most momentum from last month is …
***Former Mayor Ted Alexander***
Rev. Mark Harris +25.22%
Speaker Thom Tillis +12.76%
Heather Grant +8.73%
Sen. Kay Hagan +8.00%
Dr. Greg Brannon +1.75%
Yes – it’s Ted Alexander with the most momentum! (The Momentumeter is clearly biased toward recent entrants.) For more established candidates, Rev. Mark Harris is the momentum leader.
But the most surprising thing in this month’s edition of the social media rankings is that Dr. Brannon’s momentum appears to have peaked. For months, Brannon added huge numbers of new followers, establishing a formidable social media presence. In the last PPP poll, Thom Tillis led in every area code for the Republican primary … but Brannon led on the Internet. Now, it appears that Dr. Brannon has peaked, or at the very least his momentum has slowed considerably. What happened? Brannon can take solace in that he’s still the social media king. But he’ll need to take to the airwaves if he wants to wear the crown.
John Wynne is the “conservative voice” at PoliticsNC, where he also provides polling analysis and commentary on legislative campaigns. When not writing about politics, he enjoys gardening and listening to opera. Contact: johncwynne@gmail.com.
So! let me see. You would have me believe that the way to choose a candidate is to see how full his offices are, how much the Washington crowd lauds and magnifies him and his total resources? Well that’s not how this fellow picks a candidate. I pick a candidate who absolutely is sure of what is screwy with this country, knows the Constitution backwards and forwards and pledges to follow it succinctly. Isn’t that what we all really want in the end?
This is cool. I agree about Greg Brannon peaking in interest. Since the news of his pending lawsuit and getting taken to court for security fraud, along with all the other bad headlines it looks like his campaign is falling apart. He spread his resources too thin with a bunch of empty offices and it won’t be long now until staff starts to bail out.
Not surprising that the most negative campaign in the race is falling apart though.