The polls in Iowa are painting a very close race, but if we’ve learned anything about polling over the last couple of years it’s that the rise of smartphones and online interactions has yielded extremely inaccurate poll numbers. The two most accurate indicators of how Iowa is going to play out are net favorability and social media.
Over the years, two of my top five biggest passions have been working in politics and social media (faith, family, and cars happen to be the other three). As such, I’ve been blessed with some insights on the ebb and flow of how the topic and the venue interact. Donald Trump’s success has been the result of extreme name recognition, non-stop television coverage, and a mastery of social media. I’ve even reached out to the Cruz campaign to offer assistance in reducing the gap without luck.
We’ve been running hundreds of targeting experiments pertaining to the Presidential race on Facebook using advertising and earned media and we’ve noticed several interesting trends. One of those trends is that there are hundreds of thousands of outspoken Trump supporters on social media, more than all other candidates combined. We’re not talking about fans or followers. We’re looking at the hardcore supporters who post incessantly in Facebook comments, YouTube comments, and on Twitter.
One might believe that this would be favorable to Trump, but here’s the thing: these aren’t voters. They’re not caucus participants. They’re the “armchair pundits” who are having fun using Trump as a proxy through which they can express their anger and frustration with the United States government in general and with either party in particular. These are the people who are “doing their part” by rallying support for Trump. The problem is that 72% of the time, their responses and posts are five words or less.
Incidentally, the most popular response is “Go Trump Go!!” It is such a common post or comment that we’ve started looking into whether or not it’s the result of bots, but to the best of our knowledge it’s real people who simply don’t articulate well or often.
By contrast, only 31% of pro-Cruz comments are five words or less. The majority state some sort of case for why they support Cruz rather than just posting generically or quickly. Both camps also have the highest frequency of single-panel “memes” – images with words on top of them to state a message. Marco Rubio is the only other candidate with this type of response over 3% of the time.
What does all of this mean?
Cruz By a Lot
The polls indicate more anecdotal support for Trump than Cruz, but it takes action to vote in a primary and it takes commitment to go to caucus. The biggest risk for Cruz is that his supporters will think that it’s a lost cause. If Cruz can stay within 8% on the polls leading to the Iowa caucus, he will win. If he’s as close as he is now or if he’s leading in the polls, he will win by a large margin.
Social media represents false political reach. That’s not easy for me to say since it’s part of what I do for a living. Thankfully, it’s this false political reach that will make the Cruz victory in Iowa that much more shocking to Trump and his supporters.
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