We’re coming down to the wire to August 26 primary here in Florida, and there’s few races that have the huge scramble like the GOP primary for Florida’s 18th congressional district. So how are the candidates doing on Twitter?
The chart shows two things: in blue, the total number of tweets mentioning the candidate and, in red, the number unique people on Twitter with one or more tweets that mention the candidates.
Patrick Murphy, the democratic incumbent, has the most mentions — as is to be expected by a sitting congressman.
On the GOP side, Calvin Turnquest continues his strong social media presence but has been joined by Nick Wukoson at the top of the mention column. About 80% of Wukoson’s mentions were bunched in a 11-day period from 6/15 to 6/25 with the rest of the month having single digit days. This resulted in Turquest having a much higher median number of tweets per day than Wukoson even if Wukoson had a slightly higher total overall. And there are other reasons to suspect that Wukoson’s burst of social media activity will be short-lived1.
Notice who isn’t being mentioned in the race: Carl Domino, the purported front runner. A lack of social media savvy is not a good sign should he go on to face Murphy in November.
1: Wukoson’s lack of consistent mentions, his lackluster performance in May (66 mentions to Turnquest’s 594), and that 57% of Wukoson’s mentions were from him and his campaign manager make me question whether he will continue to rack up the mentions in July.