New research shows that the more then-candidate Donald Trump tweeted during the presidential campaign, the more his Twitter following grew, even when Trump was getting negative press attention from Republican debates or various controversies.
Among the other interesting conclusions in the research papers, which were authored by students and faculty from the
University of Rochester (full disclosure: my alma mater): In the week following Trump’s accusation that Hillary Clinton was playing the “woman card,” women were more likely to follow Clinton on Twitter. The comment, however, did not affect the gender breakdown of Trump’s followers, so it’s not like Trump’s female supporters were ditching him over the comment.
The research also found evidence that some Bernie Sanders supporters, disproportionately male ones, jumped from Sanders to Trump after the Democratic primary.
Although the team of researchers didn’t try to use their data to make predictions about the election’s outcome, “we were not surprised at all that Donald Trump won,” one researcher said.
Researchers harvested an expansive data set collected from September 2015 through October 2016 that included 8 million tweets sampled from Trump and Clinton followers, 1 million images of those followers, and, updated every 10 minutes, the number of Twitter followers of every major candidate in the very crowded presidential primary field.
To read the four research papers, click here.
Jason Russell is the contributors editor for the Washington Examiner.
