The Twitter Primary: Post-Debates Update

With debate fields as large as the DNC hosted this week, it can be hard to get a read on who did best. Partisans and in-the-tank media figures boost their preferred candidates no matter what, so hard data is hard to come by.

But one metric we do have is Twitter followers, and since I just updated the Twitter Primary on Tuesday, we have a nice baseline for at least one semi-objective proxy for additional interest generated by the debate. So let’s see what the numbers tell us:

  1. Bernie Sanders: 9.35 million (up 20,000)
  2. Cory Booker: 4.28 million (up 20,000)
  3. Joe Biden: 3.61 million (up 10,000)
  4. Kamala Harris: 2.81 million (up 90,000)
  5. Elizabeth Warren: 2.73 million (up 70,000)
  6. Marianne Williamson: 2.67 million (up 50,000)
  7. Beto O’Rourke: 1.44 million (up 10,000)
  8. Kirsten Gillibrand: 1.43 million (unchanged)
  9. Pete Buttigieg: 1.21 million (up 60,000)
  10. Amy Klobuchar: 706,000 (up 10,000)
  11. Andrew Yang: 480,000 (up 143,000)
  12. Tulsi Gabbard: 381,000 (up 34,000)
  13. Julian Castro: 308,000 (up 87,000)
  14. Steve Bullock*: 175,000 (unchanged)
  15. Bill de Blasio: 162,000 (up 5,000)
  16. John Hickenlooper: 149,000 (up 3,000)
  17. Seth Moulton*: 143,000 (unchanged)
  18. Mike Gravel*: 111,000 (up 11,600)
  19. Eric Swalwell: 96,500 (up 3,200)
  20. Jay Inslee: 72,300 (up 6,100)
  21. John Delaney: 25,900 (up 3,500)
  22. Michael Bennet: 24,900 (up 1,700)
  23. Tim Ryan: 24,300 (up 2,000)
  24. Joe Sestak*: 10,900 (up 200)
  25. Wayne Messam*: 7,738 (up 209)

*Not in the debates

For reference, President Donald Trump’s personal account has 61.5 million followers, up 200,000 since Tuesday. The official presidential @POTUS account has 26.1 million, which I’m sure includes a great deal of overlap with Trump’s personal followers.

A few notes:

  • Twitter does rounding, and counts change all the time, so the numbers might be slightly different when you look at them.
  • Common wisdom is that Harris and Warren did well in the debates, and the numbers seem to bear that out. But Andrew Yang, who far and away got to speak the least of any candidate, gained the most followers of any of the Democrats, with 143,000 since Tuesday, and passed Gabbard in total number of followers.
  • The second largest gainer was Harris at 90,000.
  • Castro also did very well, gaining 87,000 followers…but he’s still below The Andrew Yang Line.
  • Warren gained 70,000 followers
  • Buttigieg gained 60,000 followers.
  • Williamson also gained 50,000 followers. Some of those may be ironic followers for the far-out crystal space witch, but it’s a fairly big jump, especially given that before this debate her followers had barely budged at all since I started tracking follower counts back in March.
  • Less than 150,000 followers separate Harris, Warren and Williamson.
  • Many commentators thought that Booker did well, but a 20,000 follower increase doesn’t suggest significant momentum.
  • O’Rourke was said to have a disasterous debate, and gaining a mere 10,000 followers tends to confirm that.
  • Likewise with Biden’s 10,000 gain. As I’ve said since I started tracking these numbers, Biden is not gaining at the rate you would expect of a frontrunner.
  • If that’s disasterous, what are we to make of Gillibrand’s followers remaining unchanged? Her campaign has been dead in the water pretty much since she announced.
  • Gravel, who wasn’t even in the debates, gained 11,600 followers. Given the that I don’t know exactly how Twitter does rounding, I can’t say for sure that he gained more followers than Biden, but it reinforces the impression Biden had a bad debate.
  • Gabbard gained 34,000 followers, and still slipped below The Andrew Yang Line.
  • De Blasio made a lot of noise (in a literal sense) interrupting other candidates in his debate, and gained a mere 5,000 followers for his troubles. To know him is to loathe him.
  • Delany passed Bennet for 21st place and a small trophy that reads World’s Tallest Midget.

    • Who helped themselves the best with the debates? Probably Castro, whose campaign looked close to moribund and now appears to have some life. Moreover, bloodying O’Rourke might free up Texas donation dollars from disappointed Beto backers.

    Next would be Yang and Williamson, the interesting weirdos who are just now attracting attention beyond political junkies. It appears that a perceptible slice of the Democratic electorate are intrigued by them. (And while it’s still extremely unlikely, imagine the political establishment’s shock and horror if Yang and Williamson somehow placed first and second in Iowa! They wouldn’t just shit bricks, they’d poop out entire pyramids. And after 2016, are you really prepared say to it’s impossible?)

    Under-performing front-runners have time, money and infrastructure to right the ship and sail on into the early primaries, but becalmed long-shots who can’t catch the breeze simply sink. Gillibrand should get out, as should no-hopers de Blasio, Hickenlooper, Moulton, Swalwell, Inslee, Bennet, Delaney, Ryan and Messam. Bullock and Sestak are similarly doomed, but given their late start, they probably need another quarter to realize it. Gravel’s a protest candidate and has zero incentive to leave the race before the convention. O’Rourke is probably toast as well, but has enough money and infrastructure to coast another quarter in hopes of turning it around. Booker is treading water, and can probably continue to do so until he catches fire or the Nevada and South Carolina primaries either give him new life or drive in the final nails. Klobuchar has been slowly sinking, but might survive if she can make the third debate.

    Serious contenders to at least make it to Iowa: Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, Buttigieg, Yang, Williamson, Booker, Castro, Gabbard, O’Rourke, Klobuchar. In something like that order. Everyone else is simply wasting our time.

    And next week Q2 fundraising numbers start trickling out…

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    This entry was posted on Saturday, June 29th, 2019 at 12:54 PM and is filed under Democrats, Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    One Response to “The Twitter Primary: Post-Debates Update”

    1. T Migratorious says:
      June 30, 2019 at 6:00 AM

      I agree that a good part of the boost that Wiliamson got in Twitter followers is the curiosity/humor factor: what goofy thing will she say next?!

      But the other thing that set her apart from the rest of the candidates was her lack of anger. I sense that a lot of Democrats and many more swing voters are tired of the Dems constant rage and are willing to give someone who is calmer and kinder a second look.

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