Plenty of ink has been spilled as of late talking about the potential virtues of Twitter and polling.  Last week Twitter CEO Dick Costolo announced that new interactive features in the pipeline for the micro-blogging platform will include some sort of polling. Salon mentioned possible correlations between tweets and polls during the RNC and DNC. We blogged on the Twitter Political Index, which Adam Sharp who manages government and news at Twitter, said is not supposed to replace traditional polling but rather build on it.

I fully anticipate the mainstream media playing up the role of the new media as much as possible this Election season. There is nothing easier to fill in the gaps in a 27-hour-a-day news cycle than reading random tweets from unknown Tweeters (see @ladybigmac, @shuulace, @mrswisscheese, @piratedave, @dogfart).

By Sam Pauken

Last Wednesday, Twitter released a new feature on their website – the Twitter Political Index.  According to Buzzfeed, by analyzing 400 million tweets from 140 million active users, they are able to provide a daily assessment of how the Twitterverse feels about President Obama and Candidate Romney. 

In coordination with the parties’ polling companies The Mellman Group and North Star Opinion Research, this looks like the most serious effort to gauge voter sentiment via analysis of data on social networks this election cycle. 

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Lets start by saying twitter is not changing politics. Technology is changing politics and twitter is a glowing example of the trend. But the important thing for all of to pay attention to is we need to not just text but also listen.

Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post noted this week that for the political animal twitter is an essential element of the political bloodstream.  And, although we aren’t “science” folks (we love data) we might propose the term that “twitter is the plasma” of the political information flow right now.  With technology moving forward at a more rapid pace it enables the most mobile of society to stay connected in ways never before contemplated by politicians, their strategists and communications people.  Who we ask is connecting? Almost everyone, but not always through the same channels and increasingly as highlighted by NPR this week it has become harder to listen.

In calendar year 2011 there were 1.1 million Apps available in various markets which accounted for 18 million downloads. People are engaging in mobile in unprecedented ways.  We are all watching as the battle heats up between Android (google) and I/OS (Apple) one can only wonder what will transpire with Blackberry and Microsoft still needing to impact these markets. When you combine these mobile trends with the accelerated proliferation of tablets it is clear that the revolution will not be televised but odds are it will be broadcast through a mobile device.

Joel Kotkin noted recently in the Wall Street Journal that nearly four million people have left California in the past two decades…4.0 million in 2 decades with most of those are between 34- 45. That’s the effect of tax and economic policy resulting in negative population growth.  With all these departures one has to ask the following questions ? When these folks move are they taking their mobile phones with them ? When they get to where they are going: Colorado, Oregon and Texas are they getting Land-lines in their new homes? And, to make life more efficient how many of these parent age people are adopting smartphones and tablets. The people at the Sunlight Foundation are trying to get their arms around this trend with their new app called Upwardly Mobile.

When Bob Dylan said “the times they are a changing” I don’t quite think he had this in mind.  When you read the news its good to read a bunch of content from a bunch of sources and piece together the story. Find the thread running throughout the news. And one thing that strikes us today is that folks are moving and they want to be heard. We have voices and we want to use them. I wonder though how can the politicians listen when their getting blasted in the ear by a fire hose that they don’t always know who is pointing it

We know this, connections consist of two channels and its time to start listening and not just tweeting because the heard is starting to run.

On February 26^th, 2012, Hispanic-American neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year old Trayvon Martin. The shooting has transfixed and divided the nation.  If Americans seem eternally hungry for yet another racially charged murder trial this is certainly their nine-course royal banquet.  In the Trayvon Martin shooting we have race, gun-violence, youth, as well as Florida’s controversial “stand your ground”, which throws some 2^nd Amendment flavor into the mix.

The sides were quickly drawn. The Miami Heat basketball team, among many other public figures, took to wearing hoodies in support of Martin. Barack Obama, in the wake of the shooting, stated, “If I had a son, he would like Trayvon Martin.”  On the other hand, FOX News Anchor Sean Hannity, among others, seemed to rally around Zimmerman for being unfairly targeted by the media.

The media frenzy that has ensued has taken different shapes and forms depending on the medium. The Pew Research Foundation found that on Cable TV and Talk Radio the conversation focused on Gun Control and Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law.  Bloggers across the web focused on race related issues. On Twitter there has been almost visceral outrage against George Zimmerman and calls for justice.

Several weeks after Martin’s death, Zimmerman was charged and arrested.  Many have raised the question to what  Is this arrest about the law, or is media pressure, egged on by social media, running the show?

In a trial of this magnitude, people from all different backgrounds have a strong and often polarizing opinion on the case. In politics, athletics, law, and entertainment, individuals are going to have their own views and make them known. Fifty years ago, if an actor or athlete wanted to voice their opinion regarding a criminal case, they would have to write a letter to a newspaper, or attempt to get interviewed. Today, social media has allowed for any individual to voice their opinion to millions in a matter of seconds. In the case of George Zimmerman, we see the positives and possible negatives of the reality and evolution of social media and technology. The positives can be found in the ability to unify large amounts of people, likeminded people, and people who wish to mourn the untimely death of a 17 year-old boy. The negatives, with all of the online talk regarding this case, can manifest themselves in an inability for George Zimmerman to have a fair trial.

The notion of fairness in this trial must pertain to both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. Can social media involvement on this level be fair and just for both parties? It is a difficult question to address. Already, many have issues with the charge coming over a month after the shooting. The delay can beg the question; did public support sway the decision of the Florida special prosecutor?  If in fact it did not, what other role has it played? Will it ever be possible to ascertain that role?

As previously mentioned, athletes and celebrities have taken to the web advocating their stance. As millions of people listen to and follow the words of public figures, what impact then do their statements have? Our criminal justice system is built on the concept of complete innocence until proven guilty. Prior to one opening statement, many feel Zimmerman’s guilt is not in question, and have made statements as such. Can this reality of social media give Zimmerman a fair and just trial is the real question, and a question that will soon be answered.

For many Americans, George Zimmerman will always be a name synonymous with the murder of Trayvon Martin. The court’s decision will not change this reality, and the databases of Twitter and Facebook will always contain the millions of statements made in the aftermath of Martin’s death. Social media has made this case famous, jeopardizing the prospect of a fair trial for Zimmerman.  It has also made him infamous, eliminating any normalcy he could have ever hoped for.  And that is the dark side of social media.

It has never been harder to get a person to answer questions over the phone, but millions are eager to share their opinions on Facebook, Twitter, and other emerging social media sites.  Figuring out how to analyze this new massive source of information could make conventional polling based on lengthy telephone surveys obsolete.

According to a Gigaom article, IBM is so high on social media analytics software that they think it could generate $16 billion in revenue by 2015.  That number is astounding, and if accurate could mean that in a few short years the opinions expressed online through social media might shape the marketing and advertising campaigns of major corporations.

The commercial value of mining social media for consumer information is already being realized, but using tweets and posts as a stand in for political polling is another intriguing possibility.  Recently the Wall Street Journal examined the prospect of Tweets as Poll Data.  The article points out that public opinion research has “never been easier, or never been harder, depending on how you look at it.”  More information has advantages, and the prospect of being able to harness millions of social media data points is intoxicating for political pollsters.  Part of what makes social media so appealing is that the data comes in instantaneously. Traditional polling can’t take a new poll every hour, but on the Internet, feed back from say a Presidential State of the Union can be tracked in real time. Social media also gives a better sense of what people are actually doing as opposed to what they think a pollster wants to hear.

An explosion of new data also presents new problems.  For example, another WSJ article on the same topic warned that posts are often “ambiguous or even sarcastic.” While computers are making progress in language recognition software, nothing can change the fact that while twitter and facebook are extremely diverse, those who opine politically in public are likely to lean far to the left or far to the right.  There is no shortage of data on the people who passionately voice their positions on a myriad of issues, but it is the thoughts of those reluctant to publicly spill their ideology that matter most. Independents and undecided voters are unlikely to tweet about candidates or politics.

Social media analysis certainly has a part to play in modern political polling and strategy, but there is a selection bias inherent in using social media activity as a substiture for traditional polling. A hybrid between the two could be the answer.  A social media platform that gathers implicit data while employing specific polling questions that provide explicit data could be the future of political polling.

The impact of sites like Twitter and Facebook on elections is difficult to measure, in large part because metrics like “fans” and “followers” say very little about how ardent the support for a candidate might be among social media followers. It certainly doesn’t say anything about who among that follower base actually votes.

Anyone can click the “like” or “follow” button, but might not care about the messages being tweeted after that.  A candidate whose messages are being scrolled past and ignored is not achieving the success that his “numbers” may suggest.  Instead, it is perhaps instructive to examine other data points to get a better picture of the relationship between a political figure’s social media presence and his or her eventual success at the polls.

When it comes to the Republicans still alive in the GOP race, it is clear that Newt Gingrich, with 1.5 million followers, is the Twitter leader.  Mitt Romney has a meager 270,000 followers; next is Ron Paul with around 200,000. Rick Santorum seems hardly worth mentioning, lagging behind with only 85,000 followers.

The reality of the situation, however, is that Gringrich’s support is a mile wide and an inch deep, as this article on Gawker seems to confirm.

Twitter has a few ways of digging deeper into the strength of a social media following and not getting too hung up on its size.

Statistics such as average retweets per tweet and retweets per follower indicate how engaged your twitter folowers are with the message and campaign.  It’s like going around posting virtual signposts.

For example, despite the fact that Gingrich has more supporters than the next three major candidates combined, he is third in average number of re-tweets per tweet (45). Ron Paul leads with around 80 retweets per tweet and Romney is second at 50.

Retweets per follower tells an even more interesting story. Again, Paul is first, but Santorum is second with Romney and Gingrich third and fourth respectively. In looking at this metric, we see that, although not as many tweets are being retweeted, the [sometimes small number of] followers are dedicated to spreading the message of their favored candidate.  This, perhaps more than any other statistic, comes close to quantifying or ranking a candidate’s true level of support.

The more advanced Twitter statistics also seem to back up the claim that Twitter users engage more with Paul, Romney, and Santorum than they do with Gingrich.  Gingrich also stacks up poorly in mentions per hour and followers per mention.

Obviously it’s impossible to know how Twitter statistics will correspond to election results, but increasingly, campaign battles are fought via Twitter and Facebook, so an understanding of a candidate’s successes and failures in social media can give insight into how politics might be transformed by the Internet and technology.

Lou is speaking on a panel tonight at Georgetown University on democracy and technology in the 2012 election. The event is hosted by the Program on Communication, Culture and Technology. We’re very psyched to be sharing a panel with our friends from Ruck.us and Americans Elect.

You can watch the live stream down below and you can follow the event on Twitter at #2012tech

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