By James Irwin
Donald Trump’s blustery two-month campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has evolved past a colorful sideshow. The businessman-turned-candidate is practically crowding out his competitors—at least in traditional and social media.
Mr. Trump is dominating Web and social traffic since announcing his candidacy June 16, according to a Public Echoes Of Rhetoric In America project report released last week by the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management and Zignal Labs. “The Talk About Trump” paints a clear picture of a presidential primary season divided into two eras: before Trump and after Trump.
The report—the second released by GSPM and Zignal this summer—uses Zignal’s real time, cross media story tracking platform. Zignal curated mentions of the candidates from social media, more than 200,000 news outlets and more than 900 domestic television channels from May 16 to July 19. GSPM Associate Professors Michael Cornfield and Lara Brown then measured mentions of the presidential hopefuls to study the power of the candidate’s rhetoric.
PEORIA Project
Other key findings
- Sen. Ted Cruz and Ms. Clinton again scored the highest on the GSPM Echo Rating* (9) for the tracking period. Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders’ campaign has continued to be surprisingly successful. His GSPM Echo Rating (8) sits one notch above that of Mr. Trump (7).
- Republican candidate Rand Paul (GSPM Echo Rating: 5) is doing well on Twitter. His top tweets relay his issue positions rather than reacting to events or to the comments of a competitor.
- Sen. Cruz is still the most retweeted candidate (over 160,000 to date) on the Republican side.
- Mr. Bush scored a respectable 6 on the GSPM Echo Rating, which measures how the campaign leverages the conversations about their candidate.
*Measures how the campaign leverages the conversations about their candidate
What they find is a Trump-heavy media landscape. Mr. Trump accumulated more than 7 million traditional and social media mentions from May 16 to July 19, nearly all of which occurred between his mid-June announcement date and the end of the tracking period. He also has more people talking about the election in general. The mentions for all candidates in the race have gone from about 212,000 a day to approximately 473,000 a day.
He even managed to dominate air time on the stage, speaking for 11 minutes, 14 seconds at last Thursday's GOP debate, according to the New York Times. No other candidate spoke for more than 8:48.
“It’s tempting to write off the Trump phenomenon as a summer craze,” said Dr. Cornfield, the research director for GW’s Global Center for Political Engagement. “But the conversation data and the wide open structure of the race suggest that he could be a factor right into the voting process.”
Mr. Trump consistently has driven the conversation since June 16, garnering 32.5 percent of the total share of voice for all candidates and nearly half (46.6 percent) of the share of voice among Republicans. He also played a part in muting his chief rival in the polls, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who went from owning more than 80 percent of the share of voice on June 15 when he announced his candidacy to just 15 percent in the three days after. Mr. Trump managed to retain more than 70 percent of the share of voice in the three days following his entry into the race.
He lags behind other candidates in a predictable area, according to the report: turning talk into action. Mr. Trump’s announcement tweet was retweeted about 11,000 times. A tweet from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about climate change, by comparison, was retweeted more than 57,000 times over the same tracking period. Mr. Trump trails nearly the entire Republican field in effectively spreading his message through Twitter, according to the GSPM analysis. His confrontational approach has caused controversy at several points along the way.
Still, he is playing a significant role in shaping the topic of conversation. His incendiary comments on immigration caused the topic to more than double in mentions per day after he entered the race.
“Trump has not only pumped up the conversation, but changed the agenda,” said Dr. Brown, GSPM’s political management program director. “Process stories like campaign finance reports are out. Policy stories like immigration are in.”
