Sept 14 trends: Strange votes and scare tactics

LAST 24 HOURS IN A NUTSHELL:

Top House hashtags:

  1. #30years
  2. #flipitblue
  3. #bluewave

Top Senate hashtags:

  1. #choosecruz
  2. #istand
  3. #getthingsdone

Interesting climbers:

#cultureofcorruption (House: 18th place): While this is a general tag being adopted by Democrats to refer to the current GOP, today’s use comes predominantly from Kansas 03. Here, the main reference is to GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder, and his approval this week (without committee or Congressional vote) of a transfer of FEMA money to fund immigration detention centers. Strange legality to this story, worth reading more here.

#dontcaliforniaourtexas (Senate: 7th place): A new Cruz hashtag. Hollywood is raising money for Cruz opponent Beto O’Rourke, and this is evidently another way to scare Cruz’s base.

As always, visit Pollchatter for the full lists.

GENERAL TRENDS

On the Senate side, Ted Cruz’s several weeks of manic tweeting jumped to a new level, with #choosecruz reaching near the 10,000-tweet mark (the real number probably being more than this, since Twitter isn’t feeding us all the Tweets). While this hashtag is used in a number of different Tweets, the issue of not standing for the national anthem is still on top. Which, see yesterday’s comments about thinly veiled racism and bullying patriotism.

In Tennessee, a Tweet storm on behalf of Democrat Phil Bredesen pushed #GetThingsDone and #FixitPhil to the top of the charts. Bredesen is a former governor now running for retiring Sen. Bob Corker’s seat.

On the House side, Democrat Harley Rouda‘s campaign to replace GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in California 48 has recovered the top-tweeter role held through much of the summer. #30years is how long it’s been since the Orange County district has been represented by a Democrat.

Down the list, generic Demtag #flipitblue is seeing strong use in New York 19, where a GOP attack ad is depicting Democrat candidate Antonio Delgado (a Rhodes scholar and lawyer) as a thuggish “extremist” based on a former activity as a rapper.