One of the benefits to archiving all the tweets by MPs is the ability to generate interesting statistics. Politwitter has many stats and trends available on the site, but I thought I would manualy generate some additional stats. All of the below stats are based on all the tweets federal MPs have made since May 2009.
What becomes apparent from these stats is that Denis Coderre is the king of political twitter in Canada.
If you have an ideas of other stats I could create please let me know!
| user | total |
|---|---|
| DenisCoderre | 6315 |
| mpjamesmoore | 1893 |
| ujjaldosanjh | 1458 |
| brownbarrie | 1371 |
| TonyClement_MP | 1132 |
| oliviachow | 1103 |
| WildRoseMPBlake | 1054 |
| Carolyn_Bennett | 1012 |
| MichelleSimson | 954 |
| MinJK | 769 |
| user | total |
|---|---|
| DenisCoderre | 2668 |
| WoodworthMP | 292 |
| mpjamesmoore | 193 |
| ujjaldosanjh | 178 |
| TonyClement_MP | 135 |
| Carolyn_Bennett | 123 |
| darylkramp | 123 |
| MinJK | 93 |
| stanton_brucemp | 80 |
| oliviachow | 80 |
| user | total |
|---|---|
| DenisCoderre | 351 |
| keithmartinmp | 163 |
| oliviachow | 115 |
| MinJK | 97 |
| mpjamesmoore | 95 |
| brownbarrie | 60 |
| mplauriehawn | 48 |
| GlennThibeault | 45 |
| Carolyn_Bennett | 35 |
| LibbyDavies | 29 |
| user | total |
|---|---|
| DenisCoderre | 629 |
| oliviachow | 623 |
| mpjamesmoore | 568 |
| GlennThibeault | 359 |
| Siksay | 308 |
| jacklayton | 299 |
| HedyFry | 268 |
| MinJK | 264 |
| brownbarrie | 253 |
| keithmartinmp | 222 |
| user | total |
|---|---|
| DenisCoderre | 1288 |
| oliviachow | 691 |
| ujjaldosanjh | 643 |
| LibbyDavies | 479 |
| Carolyn_Bennett | 430 |
| MichelleSimson | 363 |
| TonyClement_MP | 309 |
| peterbraid | 242 |
| RickDykstra | 212 |
| WildRoseMPBlake | 207 |
| user | total |
|---|---|
| oliviachow | 13 |
| MichelleSimson | 6 |
| ujjaldosanjh | 6 |
| mpjamesmoore | 5 |
| MinJK | 3 |
| joycemurray | 2 |
| MPRubyDhalla | 2 |
| WildRoseMPBlake | 2 |
| DenisCoderre | 2 |
| HedyFry | 2 |
| user | total |
|---|---|
| DenisCoderre | 79857 |
| mpjamesmoore | 28564 |
| brownbarrie | 24924 |
| ujjaldosanjh | 21748 |
| WildRoseMPBlake | 19806 |
| TonyClement_MP | 19767 |
| Carolyn_Bennett | 18634 |
| MichelleSimson | 18627 |
| oliviachow | 18288 |
| MinJK | 14429 |
| party | total |
|---|---|
| liberal | 15314 |
| conservative | 11480 |
| ndp | 6243 |
| bloc | 393 |
| day | total |
|---|---|
| wednesday | 5501 |
| thursday | 5424 |
| tueday | 5205 |
| friday | 4894 |
| monday | 4799 |
| saturday | 4000 |
| sunday | 3610 |
The homepage of Politwitter features a pie chart on the right side showing the current months partisan indexed tweets. It’s been in the back of my mind that for many months the Liberals have been dominating this pie chart, so I thought I would investigate further.
The pie chart not only shows Federal Liberal MPs but also other liberal tweeters indexed by Politwitter and liberal hashtags. In this metric Liberals are dominating all the other parties combined.
If the chart is changed to only show Liberal MPs, the results are similar. Liberal MPs are tweeting much more than Conservatives. This is not something new, this is a trend that started at the beginning of 2010.
Individual Liberal MPs are also outpacing their rivals, the most active tweeter is Liberal MP Denis Coderre and a total 0f 5 Liberal are in the top 10 Tweeters for 2010, compared to 4 Tories and 1 NDP.
Liberals have also stepped up their game with hashtags, the conservative #ROFT hashtag used to dominate the stats as the most used partisan tag, but over this summer #LPC has overtaken it. The liberal Express hashtag has also been used a lot #lpcx.
There are 2 more Conservative MPs on Twitter than Liberals, but the liberals have a higher percentage of their MPs using Twitter.
| party | MPs with Twitter | total MPs | percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 39 | 145 | %27 |
| Liberal | 37 | 80 | %46 |
| Ndp | 21 | 38 | %55 |
| Bloc | 9 | 50 | %18 |
Liberal MPs also have more total combined followers at 145,827 compared to the Conservatives 120,696. In 2009 the Conservatives were ahead, but again the Liberals have steamed ahead in 2010. Also noteworthy that Liberal MP Justin Trudeau has more followers than party leader Gilles Duceppe and is catching up to Jack Layton.
Liberals are also ahead in other social media, 34 Liberal MPs are on Facebook compared to 30 Conservatives. 14 Liberals on Flickr, 8 Conservatives. 20 liberals on YouTube, 18 Conservatives.
Liberal MPs also post more pictures to twitter and Flickr than Conservatives, but they do lag behind the Conservatives a bit in posting YouTube videos. Liberals also have a higher combined “Social Media Score”. Liberals also have more candidates and Riding associations on Twitter.
Is this all just a coincidence or are the Liberals making a concerted effort to bolster their Twitter & social media presence and usage?
Politwitter’s main focus is tracking Twitter, so some of the stats on facebook, youtube & flickr usage might not be up-to-date.
| country | site | MPs with Twitter | total MPs | percentage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | Tweetcongress.org | 133 | 435 | 30% |
| Canada | PoliTwitter.ca | 68 | 308 | 22% |
| UK | TweetMinister.co.uk | 79 | 646 | 12% |
| Australia | TweetMP.org.au | 15 | 150 | 10% |
More people are using the mobile version of the site as well, so I did some work on the mobile site this month to clean it up and make it even faster loading. The politwitter widget is also slowly getting used, the widget had 8,100 views in August plus 50,000 more from Canadaka.net.
59 federal MPs have now joined Twitter. You can see an interactive timeline of when MPs joined here. Hopefully many more will join, I think many will this fall, especially if an election is called.
But how are MPs using Twitter and are they using it in a way that makes politics and government more accountable or accesable?
Here are some observationsBelow are some statistics I've compiled using Politwitter that show how often MPs are using Twitter as a 2-way conversation.
The numbers show that for the most part they are not replying to Canadians or to other MPs. Hopefully this will change as MPs start to grasp the potential of Twitter and learn the ropes.
The below stats are compiled from all the tweets since about mid May 2009.
MP @repliesTotal: 252
|
MP @replies to other MPsTotal: 12
|
I created a new feature called "Politician Social Media Score" which grades how each MP is using social media like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and flickr. This new feature is still a work-in-progress as I will be adding additional criteria and tweaking the point values. But its interesting to see which MPs are using new social media the most.