Ontario Provincial Election gets Twitter Tracker Boost From Nexalogy Environics and Toronto Board of Trade
As Ontario’s provincial election campaign heats up, there’s no doubt that social media will play an incredible role in determining the outcome. Four years ago, during the last provincial election, social media was still in an infancy stage. In the spring, the late Jack Layton led the NDP to official opposition status in a campaign that quickly caught “orange fever”. There is much lasting evidence of Layton’s impact as thousands mourned the death of Layton in a rare state funeral usually reserved for politicians that did actually come into power two weekends ago.
With the realization that elections can be influenced due to social media, the Toronto Board of Trade has partnered with Nexalogy Environics, a leading Canadian provider of social media research technology and consulting services to track Twitter trends during the month-long election campaign. The VoteOntario 2011 project will use the company’s software to create maps of the Twitter conversations under these hashtags: #onpoli, #ondp, #pcpo, and #olp.
An interactive lexical map will feature the top 100 words emerging from tweets and associated analytics, while a heat map will look at the concepts that are trending. Those concepts will refresh every three minutes and identify the top individuals emerging from the conversations.
Claude Théoret, the President of Nexalogy says: “People trying to follow these discussions can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information generated online. Our technology allows people to view and explore the entire conversation and see the connections that are relevant to them. Twitter is a 24/7 real-time indicator of public discussion and we will know the pulse of the people before anyone else”.
The great tool comes on the heels of news that the perception of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford on social media sites has taken a very negative turn. Robyn Doolittle of the Toronto Star reports: “Of the roughly 43,000 times Toronto’s mayor was mentioned on various social media sites since he took office last December, fewer than 3,000 posts had a positive tone. The remainder split evenly between negative and neutral”.
That could very well mean that despite Rob Ford’s endorsement for Conservative leader Tim Hudak and a right-wing sweep could very much be in jeopardy.
Toronto Board of Trade President and CEO Carol Wilding adds: “The political landscape is being revolutionized by digital conversations and the influencers emerging from them”.
How much will the social media reaction matter? A lot for any media source or blogger that manages to attain popularity during this year’s provincial election- for a recent study done by Enterprise SEO platform provider BrightEdge says websites that display Twitter’s tweet button get seven times more social media mentions than sites without the button.
With the individual being highlighted for all to see through retweeting though and the dynamic maps Nexalogy is offering, there’s a chance a different game of election campaign tactics could come forward in what is shaping up to be one of the closest provincial elections in recent memory.
An election that could go either way for incumbent premier Dalton McGuinty, who's going for a third term in office. For Andrea Horwath, the NDP leader, it's about continuing that "orange fever" that has gripped the nation in the last few months.
If we're counting by Twitter followers though, McGunity's ahead with 14,460, followed by Hudak with 9,864, and Horwath with 6,252.
Seems like the Twitterverse is painted Liberal so far.
