This Week’s 2016 Twitter Power Rankings
Hello and welcome back to Slatest’s 2016 Twitter Power Rankings (following a one-week hiatus). Above, you’ll find our handy interactive of the past week’s worth of candidate tweets: how many each White House hopeful sent and how often they were retweeted and favorited, along with how each fared in the 140-character fight with their political rivals on both sides of the aisle. (Click to zoom in on a particular candidate, and click again to see the content of each tweet.)
Below, meanwhile, you’ll find our tried-and-true method of ranking each candidate’s single most successful tweet of the past seven days. Together, the two offer a helpful snapshot of which topics dominated the political conversation online and also give us some insight into which contenders are winning the campaign Twitter wars and why.
The ground rules again:
- For the rankings below, we’re defining a candidate’s most successful tweet as the one that receives the most retweets.
- Tweets that include a direct request for a retweet are ineligible for the traditional rankings because that’s cheating. RT if you agree! (Retweet-begging tweets, though, will still appear in the interactive at the top.)
- Only tweets from the past seven days are eligible. Since we’ll publish the weekly rankings every Friday, that means any tweet sent in the seven days prior to when we hit the big red button at around 10 a.m. to cull all the data.
Without further ado:
1.) Donald Trump (Previous ranking: 3):
Thank you Marco, I agree! pic.twitter.com/PTfFzFno9p
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 16, 2016
2.) Bernie Sanders (1):
"We need you Obi-Wan." - @DannyDeVito introducing Bernie in St. Louis before Missouri's primary on Tuesday.https://t.co/W7XrF0FLdS
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 13, 2016
3.) Hillary Clinton (2):
Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri: We did it. And together, we're going to win this nomination. pic.twitter.com/6uPW4X3RUJ
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 16, 2016
4.) Ted Cruz (5):
Then why did you contribute thousands of dollars to her? https://t.co/wd6UCZSEd2
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 18, 2016
5.) John Kasich (6):
How John Kasich waits for election night results. pic.twitter.com/UTrcsd1qJy
— John Kasich (@JohnKasich) March 16, 2016
Overall and Single RT Winner: Donald Trump
As far as Trump tweets and video taunts go, this one was relatively well done: short, sweet, and to the point. By now it should be no surprise that the billionaire is willing to kick a fellow White House hopeful while he's down (and, in Rubio's case, out)—nor should it be a surprise if Trump and Rubio's predictions about what's in store for the Florida winner prove true.
Separated at Birth and in Politics: Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger
While Devito has been stumping for Bernie, his long-lost twin has declared himself a Kasich man:
Check out the behind the scenes video of my @snapchat presidential endorsement of my good friend @JohnKasich.https://t.co/rQPLiZWQx4
— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) March 8, 2016
Out: Marco Rubio (4)