Who do Delaware state politicians follow on Twitter?

Recently, we took a look at who New Jersey legislators follow on Twitter to give you an idea of the voices that the Garden State’s elected officials take an interest in, as the latest in our series on researching the Twitter ecosystems of states.

Twitter is one of the most popular platforms for political professionals to get their news. Users receive most of this content from the accounts that they follow and, luckily for our purposes, the accounts they follow are public.

We downloaded all the accounts that legislators (or their staffs) looked at, thought were worthy of keeping up with, and clicked “follow.” We have some preliminary conclusions below, and if you’re interested in conducting your own analysis or seeing how followed your own Twitter account might be, you can access the 500 most followed accounts with the button above or below (if you’re currently a user of Legislata, click the button above. If not, click below).

If you aren’t in the top 500 but want to know your own stats, send an email to chris@legislata.com with “DE Twitter request: (your screenname)” in the subject line and we can send you the stats for your account.

Our Findings

Now that you’ve taken a look at the data, let’s delve into some of our observations.

Delaware has one of the lowest Twitter presences in the legislature in the states that we’ve studied so far. There were 46 legislator accounts out of the 62 in the General Assembly - 74%. This is in comparison to 80% in New Jersey and above 90% in Massachusetts and New York.

Top five most followed accounts by Delaware state legislators and cabinet members

Institution-Driven

We often see that the top of a state’s twitter following are either full of media or government figures. In New Jersey, the state legislature loves the news. In fact, the 8 most followed Twitter accounts by NJ political figures are all Jersey-based news organizations.

In Delaware, it’s a mix of government and media institutional accounts. The News Journal, Delaware State News, Delaware Public Media, and WDEL are in the top ten. But it is not until Tom Lehman of WGAL at #41 do we get an individual reporter’s account.

Does this mean that elected officials don’t use Twitter to get their news? We can’t be entirely sure, but the data indicates that this is less likely than elsewhere. Or, at the very least, they don’t feel the need to follow individuals because the official accounts have all the information.

Joe Biden below Obama?

One surprise is that Delaware’s own Joe Biden is followed by fewer members of the legislature and cabinet than Barack Obama. It’s close - there’s only one fewer account following Biden - but it is surprising. I would have assumed that Biden would be followed by every account.

Then again, this also shows the fragmented nature of Twitter. In the 100 most followed accounts, the amount of the state legislators and cabinets members who followed were between 30% and 75%. So even among the accounts that might be considered the most influential in the digital space, many of them were still being followed by less than half of the lawmakers in the state.

How Legislata helps

Regardless of how Delawareans utilize Twitter, there’s still plenty of information to keep up with. Luckily, Legislata has features to address this.

Legislata helps you stay on top of the content that underpins your political world. Manage your own information, stay on top of what’s happening in your networks, and get your message out–all in one convenient place.

With LegislataPRO, you can also turn your inbox into a hub of productivity (an ideal solution for elected officials inundated by constituent communications). You can sign up for a free account or schedule a demo to learn more.