This Week’s 2016 Twitter Power Rankings
Hello and welcome back to Slatest’s 2016 Twitter Power Rankings. 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.) Bernie Sanders (Last week: 2):
“You should be willing to debate anytime, anywhere.” — @HillaryClinton in 2008.https://t.co/UruLT1afY3
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 29, 2016
2.) Donald Trump (1):
Why is this reporter touching me as I leave news conference? What is in her hand?? pic.twitter.com/HQB8dl0fhn
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2016
3.) Hillary Clinton (3):
We can’t let someone with this much contempt for women’s rights anywhere near the White House.https://t.co/OjU9gRwsxo
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 30, 2016
4.) Ted Cruz (4):
Happy to hear @realDonaldTrump accepted my challenge to debate one-on-one: https://t.co/mikc6fXZei
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 1, 2016
5.) John Kasich (5):
"Donald Trump is not ready to be Commander in Chief." pic.twitter.com/XR3vX4Nl4v
— John Kasich (@JohnKasich) March 31, 2016
Individual RT Wiinner: Sanders
Bernie's on a hot streak of late. He's won five of the past six Democratic contests, is up in the polls in Wisconsin, which votes Tuesday, and is the favorite in Wyoming, which votes next Saturday. None of that will be enough to change the delegate math in his favor, but it has been enough to keep the pressure on Hillary. Sanders and Clinton continue to go back and forth over the possibility of adding another debate before the New York primary, though Hillary is none too pleased with Bernie's public push on the topic. Then again, Hillary seems to be losing patience with a Democratic primary that has gone on far longer than she expected.
Overall RT Winner: Trump
Yep, again. Also, Donald, it's called a pen. Reporters use it to write down the things you say so you can't just pretend you didn't say them later.
Yep, That's a Rickroll: Cruz
I hate April Fools' Day.