Twitter and Facebook Primary Update: The GOP Stretch Run

With the holiday season winding down the stretch run in Iowa and New Hampshire I thought I would take another look at how the candidates Facebook and Twitter followings associate with their Real Clear Politics (RCP) polling averages.  There are 3 candidates left in the democrats and 12 left for the GOP.  There were 13 yesterday before George Pataki dropped out of the race when I collected the data so he is included.  The data for the Republicans is presented below. Facebook provides more data on their followers in terms of engagement so their are more variables for Facebook.  Trump has more than 5 million followers on Facebook and Twitter.  Ben Carson has faded in the polls but still has 5 million followers with 896424 engaged with the page.

	Twitter followers	FB Followers Dec	Engaged FB Dec	engagement rate Dec	Gain in FB Followers	RCP Dec Poll Avg
Donald Trump	5483626	5076088	1867698	0.36794	1793480	36.5
Ted Cruz	683376	1741989	311803	0.178993	356113	17.8
Mike Huckabee	432248	1860884	92161	0.049525	33461	1.8
Rick Santorum	250712	268813	5538	0.020602	4017	0.5
Ben Carson	1079406	5020690	896424	0.178546	2602687	9.3
Rand Paul	753468	2091438	326094	0.155919	31008	2.5
Jeb Bush	408115	309478	47112	0.152231	58747	4.2
Marco Rubio	1039434	1174934	70009	0.059585	196533	11.3
Chris Christie	77049	142603	13530	0.094879	23735	4.2
Carly Fiorina	642870	536919	23281	0.04336	255282	2.2
John Kasich	148238	154305	6159	0.039914	16092	2
George Pataki	82930	20138	151	0.007498	1808	0.2
Jim Gilmore	2612	8660	7415	0.856236	8660	0

 
I looked at the Correlations for the GOP candidates first.  The correlation matrix of the candidates data can be seen at the bottom of the post with  significant correlations in bold.  The number of engaged Facebook followers is now more highly correlated with the candidates support than the total number of followers on FB with the RCP poll data.  The candidates Twitter following is most highly correlated with candidate support accounting for 84% of the variability (it was 76% of the variability in the last Twitter primary update in August).  The scatterplot shows that Trump is way ahead with the RCP average and the Twitter followers.  If Trump is excluded from the analysis,only the number of twitter followers is significantly correlated with the RCP average with a coefficient of 0.65 accounting for 42% of the variability in the poll data.  This suggests that Trump has a high influence on the relationship between having a large social media following and high poll numbers. 

One outlier in this analysis is Ted Cruz who has the second highest poll average but the 5th highest Twitter and Facebook following.  The high correlation between the Twitter following and the number engaged on Facebook suggest that the number engaged on Twitter for Trump is also high even though only 64% or more than 2.9 million of his followers are real according to the website TwitterAudit which is far more than the total followers of the rest of the GOP field. Ted Cruz has 75% of his followers being real.  96% of my 967 followers on Twitter (@CSIwoDB) are real.  Next I will look at the Democrats social media following and their RCP poll averages with three candidates.

	Twitter followers	FB Followers Dec	FB Engaged Dec	FB Engagement Rate Dec	Gain in FB Followers	RCP Dec
Twitter followers	1
FB Followers Dec	0.751	1
Engaged Dec	0.937	0.900	1
Engagement rate Dec	0.194	0.112	0.242	1
Gain in FB Followers	0.621	0.904	0.818	0.145	1
RCP Dec	0.916	0.723	0.877	0.177	0.608	1

Time will tell if Trump's social media following will translate into wins in the primaries.  Cruz is leading Trump by an average of 2.8% in recent Iowa polls with the Caucus being on Feb 1.  Trump is still leading in New Hampshire and in other states.  Certainly having a large following gives candidates a cheap way to communicate with their supporters and the media.  The challenge is will it motivate people to go to the polls.

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