How do Democrats and Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly differ in their Twitter follows?

We recently looked at who North Carolina state legislators follow on Twitter to get a sense of whose voices the Tar Heel State’s elected officials are most likely to see when they open the app. In this post, we’re going to take a deeper look at the party splits within the data to see trends among both Democrat and Republican members of the assembly.

You can see the data for yourself, either by clicking the link above (if you’re a Legislata user), or below (if not).

Follow-friendly Democrats

While North Carolina has been considered purplish throughout the first few years of the 2020’s, the state legislature has been strongly Republican. Knowing this, our first interesting takeaway from the data is that our most followed account, Raleigh New and Observer Reporter Colin Campbell, has a significantly higher follow percentage among Democrats than Republicans. 71% of Democrats follow Campbell while only 53% of Republicans in the assembly do.

We can even take this a step further when looking at the top 5 accounts as four of the top five are followed by a higher percentage of the Democrats in the House and Senate than Republicans. Does this mean that Democrats in the legislature are the more likely to follow others than the GOP counterparts? It appears so.

Polarized followings

Another takeaway that jumps out is the degree of polarization based on right-left lean percentages. Taking another look at the R-D lean numbers, we notice that there is a considerable lean percent when looking at all of the accounts. There are not many accounts that have a lean percent less than 20%, with the highest concentration of them being in the top 10. 

This makes sense as the top accounts would naturally have more reach than any other account, so both Democrats and Republicans would be more likely to follow them. Outside of that, though, they are few and far between. Is this simply a testament to human psychology, that people tend to gravitate with those with like minded interests, or is this evidence of a further polarization extending to our informational environment? 

Taking a look at the official party twitters for both sides, polarization seems to be evident. For example, only 23% of assembly Democrats follow the NC GOP account. Wouldn’t it make sense for most, if not all, members of the Assembly to be following the official party twitter of the majority party, even if only to keep updated with their messages?

To further demonstrate polarization, we can hone in on the face of NC state politics. As we talked about in our first NC blog, Roy Cooper (#14 on our list) is a two-term governor who is of obvious consequence to those in the legislative branch. Yet only 27% of Republicans in the assembly are following him, while 75% of Democrats do. 

Quality over quantity in follower counts

In this run, we also looked at whether there was a correlation in terms of who gets followed by the legislature and how big that account is. In other words, are the most followed accounts within the General Assembly the big accounts on Twitter regardless. The answer is not at all. In fact, there is the tiniest reverse correlation, in that big accounts are more likely to be further down the list. For example, the top ten have a median follower count of 16,000, while @BarackObama (132 million followers) and @realDonaldTrump (87 million) are way down at 75.

It demonstrates that state politics does not have the same follower base on Twitter as national figures, so even if you have a relatively small follower count it can still be an impactful voice in your local area.

Cotham rising

One final note is that we re-ran the followings for writing this post to ensure it was up to date. From April, when we ran the follow stats for the previous post, and now, Rep. Tricia Cotham rose to become the fifth-most followed account, yet is still followed by more of the Democratic caucus. It shows two things: being in the spotlight helps boost social media stats, and following someone on Twitter is a sticky process, with people much less likely to unfollow someone even after they leave your party.

How Legislata can help

Regardless of how North Carolina utilizes Twitter, it’s obvious that it’s not the best way to keep up with all the political information your team needs. Luckily, Legislata has features to address this.

Legislata helps you stay on top of the information 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. You can request an invite to our North Carolina community or get a free demo of the product so learn how to get the best out of it.