President Trump’s favorite platform to communicate on has turned on him. Big time.
In one of the more unusual 2020 election models, researchers with the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management have used Twitter data to predict a blowout win for Joe Biden, if the election was now.
At the time, Biden is ahead with 334 electoral votes, with Trump holding states worth 132 votes, according to the school’s Public Echoes Of Rhetoric In America Project. Some 72 are considered toss-ups, including Georgia, Ohio, and Texas.
The more traditional model, state polls, currently shows Biden winning 272-107, according to the average from the website 270 to Win. For comparison, the site FiveThirtyEight had Hillary Rodham Clinton winning 302 electoral votes to 235 for Trump.
The model is focused on Twitter data from the 12 battleground states that are expected to decide the election: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, Georgia, Ohio, and Texas.
The school said its “Tweeterboard” counts because it “measures the pulse of public conversations about campaign politics.”
The school plans to release an update every two weeks.
“Trump has changed the way in which social media, but particularly Twitter, has influenced politics. We are interested if his use of Twitter can be quantified and used to better explain polling and election results,” research scientist Meagan O’Neill said. “Throughout the election cycle, we will be using Twitter data to identify events that reflect changes in support,” she said.
“Political tweeters are opinion leaders,” said Associate Professor Michael Cornfield, “and who and what they are talking about provides clues about what’s in voters’ minds.”
