Who do Michigan state politicians follow on Twitter?

Recently, we looked at who Delaware state politicians follow on Twitter. This week, for our ongoing series to uncover the voices that state legislators follow, we tracked down the Twitter accounts of legislators and important state officials of the Great Lake State to see who they followed. We looked at members of the Michigan state legislature and who they (or their staff) at one point clicked follow on.

As one of the most popular social media platforms, citizens and political professionals alike use Twitter to share and get their news. Users receive much of this content from the accounts they follow and, luckily for our purposes, the list of followed accounts is public. (A note on Threads, we’re monitoring its adoption, but so far it seems that the political conversation is still mostly on Twitter).

We downloaded all the accounts that officials followed and uncovered some preliminary conclusions below, but if you’re interested in conducting your own analysis or seeing how followed your own Twitter account might be, you can access the 1,000 most followed accounts with the button above.

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

Our Findings

Now that you’ve gone through the data, let’s delve into some of our findings.

Michigan’s legislators are somewhat active on Twitter and firmly stands in the middle of the pack of the states we’ve looked at. With 79% of legislators in the state owning some sort of Twitter account we were able to find (official, campaign, or personal accounts), it is clear that Twitter is an important tool for the top politicians of the state.

Notably, there is a gap between the percentage of accounts held by each body of the legislature, with only 74% of House Representatives owning a Twitter account compared to 95% of Senators.

News-led

As we have seen with other states, but is especially highlighted with Michigan, state politicians heavily follow media accounts. This suggests a reliance on Twitter as a major news source for these politicians. Nine of the top ten most followed Twitter accounts are reporters and news outlets that cover Michigan politics or state news as a whole. If politicians really are using Twitter as a source of news, this could suggest top accounts are an impactful source of the inner-workings of the state’s legislators. It also raises questions of whether their view of the world is shaped by the recommendation engine under the hood at Twitter.

Comparatively, and largely unsurprisingly, four of the top five most followed non-news related Twitter accounts belong to the Governor, House Speaker, President Pro Tempore, and Attorney General. While predictable, our findings highlight the influence these politicians have not only through their position but their general power of their voice on party politics in the state. The outlier on the list is Representative Angela Witwer, who commands a strong audience through her Twitter account.

Party Lines

Perhaps a reflection of the Democratic-dominated Michigan State Government or a reflection of varying Twitter use between parties, Democratic institutional accounts have a much higher follow percentage than their Republican counterparts. Also of note, despite the dramatically larger follower counts of the National GOP and DNC accounts among the general public, they are only followed by a fraction of the state politicians when compared to the Michigan political party accounts. Despite the obvious and predictable focus on state matters, it is still surprising how low the percentage is for the national party accounts. This could suggest not just a focus on state policy and politics, but a wider relative indifference to national politics (and hopefully its polarization).

How Legislata Helps

Regardless of how Michiganders 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.