Battle in Social Media

URL: http://graphics.wsj.com/elections/2016/facebook-gop/

This week in a Republican presidential fight filled with crazy moments, the contest on Facebook looked like a two-man race between businessman Donald Trump and former neurosurgeon Ben Carson. But data from the social media platform suggested that Tuesdays Republican date offered a bigger opportunity for other candidates to build momentum, particularly Senator Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.The Wall Street Journal partnered with Facebook to analyze campaign-related interactions on the social media platform from March 1 to Oct. 31. You could see within the social media conversations there was a measure of interest in each of the candidates that holds more than a passing resemblance to the national polling picture.

After reviewing the data that Wall Street and Facebook collected you can really see the difference in popularity between the 5 candidates that were being reviewed. Ever since he joined the race in June, Mr. Trump has been the driving force of the campaign discussion on social media. I don't really see how he can be so popular amongst people in my opinion, but he does create a lot of controversy and that can make people popular in the media. Another that seemed interesting to me was Ben Carson  whose biggest Facebook moment came with his September comments on being against a Muslim in the White House, which were followed by a five-point header for him in national polls. To me this is more of a Republican/Conservative view, unlike Donald Trump who sometimes seems to go against his own views.

This article shows how important primary elections are, and that today social media has a great influence on candidates more than in any other past years presidential debates. This also gives people a way to express their own opinions, and track political opinion.