When Tweets Speak Louder Than Polls: Can Social Media Accurately Predict the 2024 Election Outcome?
The polls were wrong. Again. On the cusp of the 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections, media outlets, fueled by traditional polling data, painted a picture of an impending Republican 'red wave.' But as the votes were counted, a different reality emerged, starkly contrasting with these forecasts. The anticipated sweep of Republican victories simply didn't happen.
This deviation between prediction and reality reveals a fundamental issue: the established methods of gauging public sentiment are lacking. It was a telling moment for the pollsters, as well as the media - the polls had missed the true sentiment of the electorate, and the media had echoed the flawed information. The reliance on these polls had led to a skewed narrative, and most importantly, they failed to truly grasp the complexities of public sentiment.
That voter sentiments can’t accurately be captured shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the inherent constraints of traditional polls.
Long considered the cornerstone of pre-election analysis, traditional polls, with their structured questions and limited participant pools, often capture just the surface of public opinion. These methods, drawing from just a few thousand respondents, offer snapshots rather than the full picture, missing the subtle undercurrents of the electorate's mood. Even pollsters themselves recognize these limitations, questioning the efficacy of their conventional approaches in today's rapidly evolving political environment.
Seeking a more comprehensive understanding of voter sentiment, our team turned to an expansive and untapped source of data: social media. Ahead of the midterm elections in November, we analyzed over 250 million publicly available Twitter posts across all fifty states, from January to September 2022.
Our approach marks a significant departure from traditional polling methods. Instead of relying on structured, prompted questions, we tap into the stream of unprompted, organic conversations on social media. This approach allows us to capture a diverse range of opinions and discussions, offering a richer, more nuanced view of public discourse and of people’s lived experiences – a digital ethnography. Furthermore, the longitudinal nature of this analysis enables us to track the ebb and flow of public sentiment, providing insights into how opinions develop, spread and evolve over time.
Back in October 2022, before the elections, our data revealed key issues diverging from other major polling results. Now, one year later, in this article, we revisit this data and pre-election insights to answer one question: How does our pre-election data compare with post-election analyses explaining the election outcomes?
Given the “missing” red wave, hundreds of post-election expert analyses emerged to make sense of the surprising election outcomes. These analyses point to a range of factors, from the nation's persistent polarization to extremist political candidates, to redistricting. Despite these diverse viewpoints, expert opinion converged on one defining topic: the crucial role of abortion rights on the results of the election.
This consensus is corroborated by exit polls, which highlight abortion as the second most critical topic for voters. Exit polls also highlight inflation and gun control as top voter concerns.
Pre-election traditional polling failed to identify this as a crucial topic. Moreover, other key issues like gun control and violent crime were also relegated to relatively lower priority concerns.
How were these key issues overlooked in polling data?
Can we enrich traditional polling methods?
Could alternate data sources give us a truer read on public opinion?
Our pre-election data, however, closely mirrors these post-election findings. In the next section, we can unpack these key issues, and see what our data indicates about the dynamics that shaped the 2022 Midterm Elections.
Our findings:
For this report, we employ a subset of our larger and more comprehensive dataset, comprising 200 million tweets. Our aim with this study is to understand how the most important issues facing the country factor into the lived experiences of voters and how these factors might impact the midterm elections. The goal is to attempt to answer what Americans are most concerned about.
Key Finding: Our analysis reveals four major issues that are top-of-mind for voters ahead of the 2022 midterms, more accurately than suggested by various pre-election polls. These key issues, as identified by our data and corroborated by exit polls and post-election analyses are:
1. Crime
2. The Economy
3. Abortion and
4. Climate Change
Crime: Public Safety and Gun Control Take Center Stage
Contrary to the minor status in pre-election polls, our analysis reveals that the topics of crime, public safety, and gun control formed the largest section of our dataset, highlighting their paramount importance in public discourse. These topics account for a significant 38% of the total conversations we track, reflecting an extensive online dialogue.
The exhibit above clearly shows how discussions notably intensified in May 2022, aligning with the Uvalde school shooting, which brought the issues of public safety and gun control to the forefront of the electorate's concerns. This marked emphasis underscores the depth of public anxiety surrounding these issues, contradicting the pollsters’ underestimation of their impact on voter sentiment.
The Economy: Inflation and Daily Cost of Living Dominate Economic Concerns
While pre-election polls flag the economy as a critical issue, our detailed analysis explores its multiple facets. These are:
1. Recession
2. Gas and fuel prices
3. Unemployment
4. Income inequality
5. Inflation
The economy emerges as the second most prevalent topic in our dataset, accounting for 34M tweets. Within this broader economic context, discussions on inflation and the daily cost of living remain consistently high, as is visible in the graph above. These posts, which made up a significant 80% of the economic discussions, highlight a deep-seated anxiety over rising prices, their impact on everyday life, and the immediate financial pressures facing voters.
Abortion: Roe v. Wade’s Far-Reaching Influence
Our data indicates that the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade profoundly influenced voter sentiment, more than pre-election polls had indicated. This issue accounts for a notable 14% of our dataset, indicating its prevalence in online discussions.
Post-election analysis labels abortion as a defining issue of the 2022 Midterms, a perspective supported by our data, which shows abortion-related conversations ranking as the third most prevalent.
This is notable, given that abortion has a much narrower focus compared to other broader topics. The exhibit above illustrates how key events related to Roe v. Wade, such as the leak of a Supreme Court draft report on May 2nd, as well as the reversal of Roe v Wade on June 24th, incite a massive public response, leading to millions of online conversations
Climate Change: A Prominent Electoral Issue
Climate change is a topic that was marked as a low priority by some pre-election polls, and primarily overlooked by post-election analyses. However, our data suggests that climate change is a topic that resonated with the voters, with the issue accounting for a significant 12% of the conversations.
Our analysis highlights the 4 major subtopics under climate:
1. Climate policy
2. Climate change denial and misinformation
3. The Inflation Reduction Act
4. Extreme weather events.
The data, as illustrated in the accompanying exhibit, shows a noticeable uptick in these discussions from June, peaking in September. This trend aligns with the severe heatwave that swept across the USA in 2022, leading to widespread fires and significant health concerns. Despite limited mention in post-election analyses, our data highlights the significance of climate change in public discourse, evidenced by millions of conversations, particularly as these events directly affected thousands of people nationwide.
Claims of Election Fraud: Fringe Concerns Remained at The Fringe
In our analysis, high-profile media topics such as the Capitol attack on January 6th and claims of election fraud show a surprisingly limited presence in online conversations, making up only a small 2% of our dataset. While these topics do feature in public discourse, they engage a much smaller portion of the online audience than anticipated, accounting for a relatively modest number of 5 million conversations. This contrasts sharply with the more pressing issues like reproductive rights, economic stability, and public safety, which dominate the online discussions. These immediate, tangible concerns captivate the attention of the electorate, significantly overshadowing the fringe topics in both volume and engagement.
The implications:
As the 2024 elections approach, a significant number of Americans — 62% to be precise — are voicing concerns about the election's impact on democracy. This apprehension exists alongside and is possibly exacerbated by divisive issues such as abortion, inflation, and climate change, which are poised to significantly influence the election. In this scenario, maintaining a healthy information environment is essential.
Reflecting on the 2022 elections, there was a notable gap between media predictions and the actual election results. Many outlets, influenced by traditional polling, anticipated a Republican 'red wave' that did not materialize. This mismatch highlights a broader problem: the media and pollsters often miss capturing the electorate's complex concerns accurately, especially on critical issues such as abortion rights and inflation, which were key voter priorities.
As we move towards the 2024 presidential elections, the takeaways from 2022 are evident: the media needs robust, reliable information to create narratives that genuinely align with the public's concerns. Providing accurate, detailed information is key to empowering the media to offer narratives that enable citizens to make informed decisions. This cycle of accurate information not only improves public discourse but also strengthens democracy. As the 2024 elections draw near, our role in continuing to provide reliable data becomes even more vital, ensuring that the power of information supports a well-informed electorate and a resilient democratic system.
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