District summary: #GASen is actually two districts, thanks to the magic of special elections (and non-specific Twitter hashtags). The first is the regular election for current GOP officeholder David Perdue’s seat, where Democrat Jon Ossof is the primary challenger.
The second is the special election for well-heeled GOP incumbent Kelly Loeffler‘s seat, which is still an open race, with GOP challenger Doug Collins making waves against Loeffler, Democrat Raphael Warnock leading the blue side of the field, and several other Democrats on the ballot. If no candidate receives a majority here on Nov. 3, a runoff will be held on Jan. 5.
Current status
My own biases up front here. Ossof and Warnock seem to be running strong, steady campaigns. Polls this week put Ossof neck-and-neck with Perdue (43% each), and Warnock is running well ahead of any of the other candidates, GOP or Dem, giving him a strong shot at the run-off, at least.
By contrast, there’s some nonsense playing out on the GOP side (a shock this year, no?). The rabidly pro-Trump Collins’ main argument against the rich and rabidly pro-Trump Loeffler is that she has a portrait of China’s Chairman Mao in her house. Which she apparently does, sort of – a Warhol valued in the multiple tens of thousands. Pretty presumably because she’s a silver-spoon type who can spend tens of millions of dollars on her own campaign, not because she’s a dirty comminist. And wealth means you deserve a place in the Senate ruling the peasants, right?
Also, what can you say about Perdue? Former CEO of Reebok and Dollar General. Conservatives seem to like him. His idea of a good time is making fun of Kamala Harris’ name. They obviously cut ’em from honorable cloth up there in the corner offices.
Twitter status
As in the #GA-07 race we looked at a few days ago, Democrat-leaning Twitter accounts are mostly blowing the pants off the GOP here.
Moreover – as in that #GA-07 district – a certain cluster of GOP-supporting accounts has altogether disappeared in the last week, after playing a relatively significant (but here not overwhelming) role over the previous three months. This has left the GOP races with small and relatively unconnected clusters around Perdue and Loeffler, while the Dem clusters contain significantly more accounts, and are far more intertwined.
This might seem to bode well for the Dems – there appears to be excitement there that slips easily across the borders of the individual races here, while the GOP races are far more isolated. However, some of this seeming interconnectedness is because Democratic Twitter networks around the country are more actively boosting traffic in key races nationwide. So strong support here doesn’t necessarily translate into votes on the ground.
Top hashtags
Here’s a sample of the top hashtags in the district(s) from the Dem group over the past seven days. It’s clear that much of the support here is coming from the activist networks highlighting multiple key races at a time.
| Hashtag | Number of appearances |
|---|---|
| gasen | 3796 |
| gapol | 1877 |
| vote | 216 |
| demcastga | 160 |
| iasen | 119 |
| ncsen | 118 |
| mtsen | 109 |
| cosen | 108 |
| aksen | 107 |
| mesen | 85 |
| txsen | 82 |
| georgia | 80 |
| covid19 | 80 |
| scsen | 80 |
| flipthesenateblue | 79 |
| azsen | 72 |
| kssen | 67 |
| misen | 61 |
| voteyourossoff | 60 |
| watch | 49 |
| coronavirus | 40 |
| voteearly | 38 |
| flipthesenate | 36 |
| gasendebate | 35 |
| ohio | 28 |
| winwithwarnock | 28 |
| 2020election | 28 |
| kysen | 27 |
| scpol | 25 |
| trumprally | 24 |
| potus | 23 |
| mapoli | 21 |
| warnockforga | 19 |
| demcast | 18 |
| ossoff2020 | 18 |
| ivotedforwarnock | 18 |
| mssen | 18 |
| onev1 | 17 |
| votehimout | 15 |
| alsen | 15 |
| apcdebates | 14 |
| joebiden | 14 |
| presidenttrump | 14 |
| dencastga | 13 |
| reiders | 13 |
| gagop | 13 |
| ncpol | 13 |
| thereidout | 12 |
| electiontwitter | 11 |
| bigot | 11 |
And the corresponding list from Republicans. There are far fewer posts in the main hashtags here, but also a tighter focus on specific GOP-base issues.
| Hashtag | Number of appearances |
|---|---|
| gasen | 627 |
| gapol | 584 |
| ncsen | 16 |
| scotus | 12 |
| covid | 12 |
| paycheckprotectionprogram | 10 |
| maga | 9 |
| covid19 | 6 |
| prolife | 6 |
| sbalistendorsed | 6 |
| ccpkelly | 6 |
| kellyloeffler | 5 |
| gagop | 5 |
| girlpower | 5 |
| georgia | 5 |
| fourmoreyears | 4 |
| backtheblue | 4 |
| jobsnotmobs | 4 |
| earlyvote | 4 |
| postthepeach | 4 |
| formoreyears | 4 |
| ga06 | 4 |
| apcdebates | 4 |
| promisesmadepromiseskept | 3 |
| teamloeffler | 3 |
| caresact | 2 |
| earlyvoting | 2 |
| gasendebate | 2 |
| countdown | 2 |
| 2a | 2 |
| corruption | 2 |
| nyse | 2 |
| georgiaisnotforsale | 2 |
| coronavirus | 2 |
| neverloeffler | 2 |
| ga | 2 |
| aksen | 2 |
| smithforgeorgia | 2 |
| getoutthevote | 2 |
| alsen | 1 |
| ga14 | 1 |
| lyinloeffler | 1 |
| nevertrump | 1 |
| ethicsmatter | 1 |
| dougcollins | 1 |
| kag | 1 |
| txsen | 1 |
| trumprallymacon | 1 |
| maconrally | 1 |
| magaa | 1 |
Network structure
Finally, here’s a network visualization of connections between accounts posting in the #GASen race(s) for the last three months.
The green portion of the main central blob is unambiguously Democrats, centered around Warnock, the state’s Democratic party, etc. The black and purple swatches tend to lean Democrat, but are less obviously homogeneous, with their big hubs tending to be reporters or media organizations, and with a few apparent Republicans scattered in as well.
The red and orange sections are clearly GOP – however, the orange group overlaps strongly with the group of #GA-07 accounts that burned brightly, and have since disappeared. My guess is that they’ve been bounced or blocked by Twitter.
For comparison, here’s a similar visualization depicting the last seven days of traffic.
Here, the green and blue in the lower left are clear Democrat accounts, while the orange are also Democrat-allied (e.g., The Lincoln Project). Purple once again tends to lean Democrat, but the big hub is a reporter, and the group isn’t as homogeneous overall.
Red is the Loeffler group, and tan is around Perdue. As noted above, the disappearing GOP accounts from #GA-07 are gone here too.
Bonus bot
This district also has one of the clearest examples of bot nonsense I’ve seen.
The triangles in the tan section of the 7-day graph are indicating an exceedingly strong link between SugengHaryono70 and Purdue’s campaign account. Best buds, lots of retweets. This account has retweeted PerdueSenate 44 times in the last week alone – second only to its love for CorkyforSenate over in New Hampshire.
According to the SugengHaryono70 Twitter account and totally real LinkedIn account, Sugeng Haryono is a senior facilities engineer at PetroChina International in Indonesia.
Which makes perfect sense why this “person” would focus exclusively on US political content, be a rabid supporter of Trump against Biden, and be an extremely high-frequency retweeter of GOP House and Senate electoral content, in quite a number of competitive races.
Hmm.
I don’t know yet if this account is part of a broader network. I assume so, but will have to look into it further.