LAST 24 HOURS IN A NUTSHELL:
Top House hashtags:
Top Senate hashtags:
Interesting climbers:
#betomania (7th place Senate): An indication that Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke is beginning to crack into the top-Twitter lists. Largely used by strong supporters (not necessarily in-district), rather than by the campaign itself. Closely followed by #betoforsenate (8th place Senate).
#maga: The old classic. Noted particularly because it fell into yesterday’s top-three ranks (but we didn’t have time to do a list). Today particularly strong in Ohio 12, California 49 (both with references to support from Trump sons), and Texas Senate.
#leadright: A cross-district GOP hashtag used in a number of districts. Top users today are split fairly evenly between the Arizona, Missouri and Indiana Senate races.
GENERAL TRENDS:
On the House side, a trio of standard Dem hashtags leads the Sunday posting. #takeitback is distributed across a broad range of districts, with specific strengths in Iowa 03, California 21 and West Virginia 03. #RedtoBlue is also strong in WV03, followed by Virginia 07 and Michigan 08, but unlike the leader is primarily a DCCC hashtag. #BlueWave is more of a grassroots tag, scattered across a number of districts.
On the Senate side, the top tags are still coming from Ted Cruz’s campaign, with some decline evident after a very strong peak on the 15th. We’re doing separate ongoing analysis of this weeks-long Twitter surge. Preliminary conclusion (with more to follow): A very large proportion of the top tweeters here should be looked at with a great deal of suspicion.
Behind Cruz’s campaign is GOP Senate candidate John James in Michigan. James, an Iraq war veteran, is one of the few black Republicans running prominently this year, and has had a very strong Twitter campaign throughout the summer. We’ll definitely see much more from this campaign here in the next few months.