LAST 24 HOURS IN A NUTSHELL:
Top House hashtags:
Top Senate hashtags:
Interesting climbers:
- #mepolitics (6th place House): A focus on ME-02, where Democrat Jared Golden has been endorsed by Joe Biden. However, independent candidate Tiffany Bond is also seeing considerable Twitter support.
- #ComradeRohrabacher (10th place House): Largely originated by one persistent Democratic supporter of CA-48 candidate Harley Rouda, excoriating incumbent Republican Dana Rohrabacher for his votes against imposing sanctions on Russia. Also being picked up by other Rouda backers, however.
- #bigpharma (19th place House): Used by both sides. Dominated by reference to a VoteVets ad buy in WV-03, criticizing GOP candidate Carol Miller for taking pharma money in a state flooded with opioids. However, GOP accounts are also criticizing Democrat Debbie Stabenow in MISen for taking the same kind of contributions.
GENERAL TRENDS
On the House side, we see the interesting phenomenon of a generally slow race pushed to the Pollchatter top lists by a single event – in this case, a Miami columnist’s observation that GOP challenger Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27) was deleting pro-Trump tweets in an apparent attempt to appear more moderate. That district has been theoretically deemed strong for Democrats, but candidate Donna Shalala has reportedly been running behind expectations.
On the Senate side, Tuesday evening’s Cruz-O’Rourke debate in Texas places far ahead of all rivals. As a reminder, we looked at the surge pro-Cruz Texas tweets after the first debate, and found that the Cruz Twittersphere skewed far more sharply toward high “trollbot” ratings (according to Bot Sentinel’s assessments) than did O’Rourke’s supporters.