Who does the New Jersey State Legislature 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. There are a total of 96 members of the New Jersey legislature who have Twitter accounts and follow others (66 Assembly members and 30 Senate members).

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 “NJ 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.

New Jersey’s legislature is only somewhat active on Twitter. While many members had at least one account, and some members had two accounts, quite a few legislators had neither an official nor a personal presence on Twitter. In fact, some members had a joint account for themselves and the other legislators for their district, something we haven’t seen in any other states. With 102 unique handles among legislators and 80% of the legislature having at least one account, it’s towards the bottom end of states we’ve examined so far in terms of its presence.

Top ten most followed accounts by New Jersey state legislators

Media-Driven

New Jersey’s state legislature loves the news. In fact, the 8 most followed Twitter accounts by NJ political figures are all Jersey-based news organizations. Number 1 on our ranking is NJ.com Politics (@nj_politics), the political arm of the NJ Statehouse Bureau’s official news outlet. That’s followed by @njdotcom and Matt Friedman of Politico NJ.

Does this mean that elected officials use Twitter to get their news? We can’t be entirely sure, but the data indicates that state news accounts pop up often when legislators open Twitter. All eight news organizations at the top of the Twitter most-followed list are local to NJ. This suggests that legislators have more of an interest in state news instead of national or global news.

A Purple State?

While solidly Democratic in presidential elections, at the state level New Jersey has a sizable Republican caucus (38% of the Senate and 43% of the House). However, our Twitter data leans heavily toward one end of the scale.

Democratic Governor Phil Murphy (@govmurphy) is tied for 7th on our ranking, followed by the NJ Assembly Democrats (@njassemblydems) in 10th. Meanwhile, the Republican counterpart, NJ Assembly GOP (@njassemblygop) ranks 28th. Our analysis of state senators follows this pattern. NJ Senate Democrats (@njsendems) ranks 14th, while NJ Senate GOP (@senatenj) ranks 53rd.

This is a reflection of people choosing to follow members of their own party and why relying on Twitter for news has its disadvantages. While it’s useful for a Democrat to know what the know what the official Democratic accounts are tweeting, and Republicans for Republican accounts, it is also important to know what one’s opponents are saying.

Regardless of how New Jersey’s state legislature utilizes Twitter, it’s obvious that they’re either not taking advantage of how technology can make information sharing simple, or they don’t find Twitter to be the most convenient platform for that. 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 New Jersey community, which has just launched here.

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