District summary: Georgia’s 7th congressional district: An open-seat district where Twitter megaphones have brought considerable attention from around the country. Several high-intensity non-campaign accounts and retweet networks have driven traffic to outsized levels here over past months. But in the last week, Republicans have practically disappeared.
Current status: Democrats supporting Carolyn Bourdeaux, a professor and former state Senate Budget and Evaluation Office director, continue to draw nationwide attention. A number of highly active activist networks have focused on the race. Democrats have worked hard to tie Republican candidate Rich McCormick to the QANON conspiracy.
For much of the campaign, a small number of GOP accounts, and a broader network of retweeters, had also produced a significant amount of traffic in favor of McCormick. But most of these key accounts have gone all but dark in the last week, leaving the GOP side virtually silent.
Top hashtags:
Here’s a sample of the top hashtags in the district from the Dem group over the past 7 days.
| HASHTAG | POST COUNT |
|---|---|
| ga07 | 2865 |
| qanon | 965 |
| gapol | 629 |
| ga7 | 113 |
| wtpblue | 83 |
| qanoncult | 75 |
| flipthesenateblue | 75 |
| demvoice1 | 74 |
| finishthejob | 71 |
| bluewaveiscomingsoon | 69 |
| flipthesenate | 59 |
| wtphouse | 43 |
| apcdebates | 35 |
| debates | 34 |
| demcastga | 34 |
| bluewave | 27 |
| vote | 19 |
| holdthehouse | 18 |
| covid | 18 |
| ga6 | 13 |
| carolynbourdeaux | 12 |
| postcardsforamerica | 11 |
| flipgeorgia | 8 |
| votebymail | 8 |
| ga1 | 7 |
And the corresponding list from Republicans – crickets chirping, in comparison.
| ga07 | 7 |
|---|---|
| gapol | 5 |
| ga7 | 4 |
| rohll5 | 3 |
| prolife | 1 |
| sbalistcandidatespotlights | 1 |
| sbalistendorsed | 1 |
Network structure
Here’s a network visualization of connections between accounts for the last three months. The blue island in the lower left is the Republican cluster, while the massive blob in the top right is made up predominantly of Democrat-leaning accounts. The purple are largely accounts from within (or closely connected) to Georgia, while the other colors are networks dominated by activists from other states (e.g., Iowa, Pennsylvania).
For comparison, here’s a similar visualization depicting the last seven days of traffic. It uses a different algorithm to separate the clusters, but you’ll still be able to see – the tiny amount of blue in the lower right are the GOP accounts, while the other clusters are all Democratic-leaning.
How to explain this? I can’t, yet. Either Twitter has banned or limited key GOP-supporting accounts that served as the head of a retweet network, or GOP activists have given up on this race. Or it’s something else. We’ll keep poking.