Election Buzz: Week Two of the Ontario Campaign on Twitter
While the Conservatives have gained in intended vote it doesn't appear that the discussion on Twitter is the reason for this as Twitter sentiment toward the PCs remained largely negative (59% negative, 8% positive and 33% neutral). The Liberals fared better (35% negative, 23% positive and 42% neutral) while the NDP are the only party that received more positive mentions 31% than negative 28% (and 41% neutral).
The discussion around the Conservatives included mentions of their job plan (mostly negative), education plan (mostly negative), and plans for the TTC (negative). On the positive side mentions of allegations of corruption within Liberals and the need for a new direction shone a favorable light on the Conservatives.
The following Tweets are typical of comments made about the Conservatives during this period:
"Hudak's public sector layoffs would push Ontario to 9.7% unemployment levels and drive province into recession."
"When I ask a question about laid off education workers becoming plumbers in a Hudak Ontario, he lightly scolds me for not being serious."
"Beware of public transit announcements from politicians who don't know how to use public transit."
Discussion of the Liberals was mostly neutral and included platform comparisons to other parties and announcements of the community and campaign events. Their budget and plans for a greater deficit received largely negative commentary as did the perception that Premier Wynne was avoiding questions. Their job creation plans were largely seen as a positive. Despite largely benign social commentary on the Liberals, many Tweeters were critical of their governing legacy:
"Do Wynne Liberals realize in mocking Hudak's platform they're mocking Drummond's advice to them the guy they said was an expert?"
"If you can't recognize the damage the Liberals have done you're a lost cause. Vote Conservative."
"@Kathleen_Wynne you have no plan & no platform. All you have are fear mongering lies & MORE #OLPCORRUPTION."
The limited discussion concerning the NDP leaned positive and focussed on their proposed changes to hydro (bill reduction and mergers) and plans for increased child care support. Negative comments included discussion of how their lack of support for the Liberal budget had forced election.
One interesting development from the Twitter analysis is the level of engagement around all the Parties. On average Canadians engage on Twitter 1.49 times when discussing a public issue (average taken from Ipsos studies conducted throughout 2013-14) however, engagement around all three parties during week one of the Ontario campaign is considerably higher (2.73 for the NDP, 2.62 for the Liberals and 2.22 for the Conservatives) which means Ontarians are engaging in the election more deeply (with more back and forth discussion) than they have on past public issues.
Twitter use and online discussions of public policy and political issues skew heavily toward younger and higher educated Canadians so it remains to be seen how the social media debate will play out come election day but one thing is for sure - with 37% of Ontarians talking politics and policy online there is a discussion taking place that the political parties may want to listen to.
These are some of the findings of an Ipsos Reid Twitter Analysis conducted between May 10 to 16, 2014. For this analysis a boolean search query was created to identify all English language Twitter discussions from people in Ontario that contained mentions of the Ontario NDP, Liberals, and Conservatives, and all mentions of the party leaders. Each party and leader were put in a separate search query so they could be compared. Official party Twitter accounts and some terms often associated with the federal parties were excluded. All Tweets were pulled from Sysomos between May 10 and May 16. The scan pulled in 50,455 Tweets between those dates. Of those, we pulled a random sample of 300 Tweets per party and coded them for sentiment and content.
For more information on this news release, please contact:
Mike Colledge
President
Ipsos Reid
Public Affairs
613.688.8971
[email protected]
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