Social buzz around U.S Presidential elections 2012 - 4

Analysis of the social media buzz for candidates running for President between 19th January to 25th January, 2012

Candidates Analysed*…

BARACK OBAMARON PAUL

MITT ROMNEYRICK PERRY

NEWT GINGRICH

RICK SANTORUM

*This week’s analysis does not include Jon Huntsman since he has dropped out of the Presidential elections

Images: Wikipedia

In comparison to last week…

Barack Obama’s share of conversation was the highest at 34%, primarily due to the SOTU address by him last week

Mitt Romney’s share of conversation decreased by 2 percentage points at 22%

Gingrich’s shot to 16% , primarily due to his stunning victory at South Carolina

Positive Buzz – 32% Negative Buzz – 39% Neutral Buzz – 29%

President Obama’s State of the Union address garnered negative buzz especially from Microblogs

Positive Buzz – 32% Negative Buzz – 39% Neutral Buzz – 29%

President Obama’s State of the Union address garnered negative buzz especially from Microblogs

Overall Share-of-voiceOverall Share-of-voice

Sentiment break-up for Barack ObamaSentiment break-up for Barack Obama

Sentiment around SOTU was divided, with percentage of negative and positive buzz being almost the same

Most popular topics pertaining to the president’s address were pertaining to taxes, jobs and the state of the economy under Obama’s leadershipTopical Trends for The State of the Union SpeechTopical Trends for The State of the Union Speech

Break-up of SentimentBreak-up of Sentiment

Bloggers seemed to have an affinity towards Rick Perry instead, with the highest number of blogs being written after his drop out

President Obama’s SOTU address dominated conversations on Twitter, the majority of which were negative. The second highest percentage of buzz around him was contributed by online news. to last week, when people were cheering his decision to stop the SOPA

Candidate Mitt Romney garnered highest percentage of buzz on Facebook, in comparison to his contenders

Break-up of chatter across channelsBreak-up of chatter across channels

Sentiment around Newt Gingrich largely neutral

Mitt Romney, who managed 27.8% votes in his favour, had the highest percentage of negative chatter around him. His confession of paying a lower rate on his multimillion-dollar income than the average American was mainly responsible for this

Ron Paul’s votes might be a meager 13%, but he has been leading with maximum percentage of positive buzz for 4 weeks in a row

As for candidate Rick Perry, the amount of positive buzz was almost twice as much as the negative buzz

Although Obama’s SOTU address did lead to negative buzz, but overall the positive conversations outnumbered the negative

Could also be attributed to the popularity of the video featuring Barack Obama, wherein he sings Al Greene’s ‘let’s stay together’. This video got 4 million hits and also saw an overwhelming amount of shares

Break-up of sentimentBreak-up of sentiment

Majority of conversations around Gingrich were related to his astonishing victory at the Primary. In addition, people also widely debated and shared Gingrich’s comments about Obama’s tax policy discussed during his speech

The chatter around Rick Perry was pertaining to his decision to drop out of the GOP race and endorse Mitt Romney instead.The topical trends also reflect chatter about Perry’s referral to social security as a Ponzi scheme, made a few months back

Topical Trends for Newt GingrichTopical Trends for Newt Gingrich

Topical Trends for Rick PerryTopical Trends for Rick Perry

*Topical trends highlight topics associated with the primary keyword. The size of words indicate the frequency of occurrence

Topical Trends for Mitt RomneyTopical Trends for Mitt Romney

Topical Trends for Barack ObamaTopical Trends for Barack Obama

Romney’s pre-emptive rebuttal on President Obama’s SOTU was a far more popular topic as compared to his loss at the South Carolina Primary.The topic that drove significant amount of negative chatter around Romney was pertaining to his tax returnsFor Obama, as expected the dominant share of conversation was around his much awaited State of the Union address, in which he pledged to increase spending on education, infrastructure and job creation

Topical Trends for Ron PaulTopical Trends for Ron Paul

Topical Trends for Rick SantorumTopical Trends for Rick Santorum

Ron Paul‘s proposal to decriminalise marijuana was met with harsh criticism online. Although some might argue that legalising drugs is his least controversial idea, social media sites claim otherwise

Rick Santorum’s claim that he would urge his daughter not to have an abortion even after rape, it gave rise to a large quantum of negative chatterAnother popular topic of discussion was Santorum’s 19 year old nephew bashing his own uncle over a political history in a piece entitled, “The trouble with my uncle”

To sum it up..

Although social media was buzzing with conversations around Barack Obama this week, not all buzz was positive. Amongst the Republican candidates, Mitt Romney continues to dominate the chatter online.

As for South Carolina Primary winner Newt Gingrich, will his lack of popularity on social media sites affect the votes during the Primary next week in Florida?

To find out, catch our update next week as we dissect the social buzz, sentiment and topics around your favourite candidates..

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