React: The Highs and Lows of Super Tuesday in Four Charts

Super Tuesday 2016 is one of the most hotly anticipated nights of the year in American politics, and for good reason.

Last night the voters of America gave us an insight into what who may very well lead the party nominations for the 2016 race to the White House.

The hype started out early for Super Tuesday – at 1pm ET the hashtag had already registered 25,000 social mentions. As Wednesday broke on the East Coast this number increased to 1.9 million mentions (including retweets).

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Let’s talk Trump

What many predicted/feared/hoped would happen, happened.

Trump won seven out of eleven states. Early wins for the divisive property mogul came from Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts and Tennessee.

Throughout the whole night, and essentially the race so far, Trump commanded the majority share of voice of the GOP candidates. He finished with 69% of the total social Republican conversation.

Interestingly, Trump addressing the crowds in Florida earned him more mentions than at any other point during the night. Even though he accumulated roughly 84,000 mentions during this time, 55% were negative.

Many of these comments were also directed at Chris Christie and his presence beside Trump on the stage, with some even thinking he was being held hostage.

Gonna need Chris Christie to hold up a copy of today’s newspaper to prove this is not a prerecorded hologram hostage video

— Tim Mak (@timkmak) March 2, 2016

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The rest of the GOP pack

Cruz’s victories in Texas and Oklahoma won’t come as any kind of surprise.

For a brief moment at 9:17pm ET, Cruz, when he won Oklahoma, earned more mentions than Trump. Having said that, this lasted barely more than 60 seconds.

As for Marco Rubio, his performance was weaker than anticipated with only one win in the state of Minnesota. However if we look to social media we can see that of all the Republican candidates Rubio was favored the most.

He finished with 11% share of voice and a 75% positive score on sentiment-categorized mentions.

John Kasich may have to consider a career change after tonight as the governor failed to win any states and social wasn’t very forgiving about it.

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Hillary takes the lead

The Clinton camp will be rejoicing today – the only female candidate secured eight of the twelve states.

Although, early victories in Georgia, Virginia and Alabama did not transfer onto social as at roughly 8 pm ET Sanders was driving the majority of the social conversation.

#SuperTuesday: @HillaryClinton won Georgia & Virginia but @BernieSanders commands the majority of the conversation pic.twitter.com/AQlsalqrFE

— Brandwatch React (@BW_React) March 2, 2016

By the end of the night Clinton held the majority of the social conversation in seven (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming) of the states. However, Sanders held the overall majority at 61% – 420,000 mentions.

It’s not over for Sanders yet, he held his own in four states while also finishing at the top of the sentiment poll for all candidates with 79% positive mentions.

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Insight on the winners

Following both Clinton’s and Trump’s win in Alabama we compared the two candidates on share of voice and sentiment.

#SuperTuesday: Interestingly, @realDonaldTrump has a lead over @HillaryClinton on both SOV & sentiment in Alabama pic.twitter.com/EBJe5cRhPk

— Brandwatch React (@BW_React) March 2, 2016

It’s no surprise that Trump dominated the conversation but what is interesting to note is that, according to social, Trump held more favor than Clinton.

At the close of the night Trump had 56% positive sentiment score compared to Clinton’s 50%.

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The results from Super Tuesday will make for an interesting debate on Thursday so be sure to follow @BW_React for live analysis and insights.

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