Social media in the Texas primary

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Along with blogging, following the elections, and applying for jobs this summer, I’m also working on my honors thesis at St. Edward’s: “All Politics is Social: Social Media 101 for State and Local Political Campaigns.”

The finished project, which I plan to publish on this blog, will explain best practices with a particular focus on small, grassroots-based campaigns that are tight on time and money and need a little boost in the social sphere. I’m planning to incorporate secondary research, interviews with experts in Texas politics and/or social media, and some number-crunching of my own.

In March, after candidate filing closed and around the time the redistricting legal battle was (finally) settled, I created a database of every State House and Senate candidate and how many Facebook fans and Twitter followers they had. This week, just after the primary, I updated those numbers and have been using them to gather insights about who has been most effective on social media and what tactics other campaigns could implement.

There are a ton of granular insights analytics addicts like me might find interesting, but first I wanted to share the few general statements I’ve gathered so far: First, having more fans or followers doesn’t guarantee victory. Second, incumbency – or at least some form of political prominence – is really the best advantage you can have… but challengers exhibit the greatest growth.

Here’s a graph comparing the size of candidates’ following as of this week compared to the percentage of the vote they pulled in the primary:

(Click to see larger)

If you ignore the outliers on the right side of the graph, you can see there is some correlation, at least up to about 1,000 on Facebook and 500 on Twitter. But, though I haven’t dusted off my AP Statistics textbook quite yet, I don’t think it’s quite strong enough to make a definitive statement at this time.

And here’s what I find most interesting: the rankings. In the lists of candidates with the largest following, especially on Facebook, you’ll recognize just about all the names.

Facebook, Texas House

  1. Joe Straus, 7,227
  2. James White, 5,687
  3. Ryan Guillen, 5,329
  4. Mike Villarreal, 5,110
  5. Van Taylor, 4,114

Facebook, Texas Senate

  1. Elizabeth Ames Jones, 12,478
  2. Kirk Watson, 11,444
  3. Dan Patrick, 10,909
  4. Leticia Van De Putte, 6,049
  5. Donna Campbell, 5,264

Twitter, Texas House

  1. Joe Straus, 4,687
  2. Chris Scotti, 2,641
  3. Stephanie Klick, 2,485
  4. John Faulk, 2,200
  5. Eddie Rodriguez, 2,099

Twitter, Texas Senate

  1. Dan Patrick, 4,756
  2. Leticia Van De Putte, 3,535
  3. Kirk Watson, 3,280
  4. Rodney Ellis, 2,427
  5. Elizabeth Ames Jones, 1,873

But when ranking candidates who saw the most growth in following between March and May, some of the names are a bit less familiar. Here’s where the conservative challengers, in the House in particular, showed their quality. Most either won outright or are in a runoff.

Facebook, Texas House

  1. Jon Cole, 1,286 added
  2. Troy Bonin, 941 added
  3. Jonathan Stickland, 658 added
  4. Dan Branch, 576 added
  5. Giovanni Capriglione, 564 added

Twitter, Texas House

  1. Greg Bonnen, 527
  2. Troy Bonin, 426
  3. Josh Tetens, 350
  4. Lady Theresa Thombs, 272
  5. Joe Straus, 257

Facebook, Texas Senate

  1. Kirk Watson, 5,905
  2. Kelly Hancock, 988
  3. Donna Campbell, 495
  4. Wendy Davis, 489
  5. Charles Schwertner, 476

Twitter, Texas Senate

  1. Leticia Van De Putte, 395
  2. Wendy Davis, 390
  3. Kirk Watson, 328
  4. Dan Patrick, 207
  5. Rodney Ellis, 201

Interesting, right? The big-name incumbents are still there, but mostly in the Senate where there are fewer and more prominent members. Democrats are, perhaps surprisingly, prominent throughout. But in the State House, conservative, grassroots candidates with minimal political exposure saw substantial growth. Were they using social media particularly effectively, or did word of their candidacy just happen to spread? I don’t know yet. More analysis is yet to come.

Your thoughts? Any data I should add? Insights I missed? Favorite candidates I should be sure to analyze?

Update: Thanks to the folks in Leticia Van De Putte’s office for correcting an error in the Facebook growth list.

  • http://TexasAlliancwforLife.org Joe Pojman

    Katie, very interesting. Excellent work. Some other things how to imclude your analysis:

    * tweets/day
    * fb posts/day
    * Number of times the tweets are RTed.
    * Number of times fb posts are shared.
    * For non statewide candidates, number of fans/followers in district.
    * Interesting to see more analysis about the comtect of the communications. Number of posts related to the campaign to educate and attract voters. How many and how effective are the posts for GOTV during early voting and on election day.

    Dr. Joe Pojman
    Executive Director
    Texas Alliance for Life

    • Katie Thompson

      Thanks for the comment, Joe! I’m definitely going to try and look at posts per day and shares (though Facebook shares get a little hinky, because, unless there’s a new Insights option, I believe admins can only see shares that are either public or by their friends). As far as content, I’m not sure how much analysis I can do on so many candidates, though I do love the idea. I may have to pull a smaller sample and do mini-case studies.

      Thanks for the feedback! Hope all’s well at TAL.

  • http://www.thomasumstattd.com Thomas

    Interesting post! Another thing I would be curious about is how many were paying for Facebook advertising and how much of the growth was organic.