Category Archives: Florida Senate

How Florida’s Gubernatorial Hopefuls Ended The Year On Twitter

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Let’s just say The Grinch stole Cristmas …

Click to enlarge, although it doesn't get better for Crist if you do...

Click to enlarge, although it doesn’t get better for Crist if you do…

After a huge spike for the announcement of his campaign, Charlie Crist has taken a seat in the back of the Twitter bus along with Senator Bill Nelson and fellow democratic hopeful Nan Rich.  Meanwhile, up front, Rick Scott is clearly driving the bus…

A look at a detailed analysis of Charlie Crist’s recent Twitter activity shows us a couple of key things:

  • He’s not tweeting every day (see the daily stats tab) or with any decent regularity
  • Most of the mentions of Crist are not in response to his Twitter activity, but spontaneous comments from others

Compare this to Rick Scott’s Twitter statistics, and you can see the difference a consistent and constant use of social media makes — much more of the Twitter conversation about Rick Scott is driven by Scott’s social media team.  About 12% of the mentions of Charlie Crist on Twitter are driven by Crist, while almost 40% of the discussion of Scott is driven by his tweets.  Charlie Crist should be able to swamp the discussion on Twitter right now, given that the news about him is generated by him. 

The difference a little effort makes is between being adrift in social media and controlling or at least shaping the conversation.  Even Senator Nan Rich is able to drive 33% of the conversation about herself on Twitter.

Crist’s half-hearted use of Twitter even extends to his home page, which looks like he hired a 13-year old to do a knock-off of Nan Rich’s Twitter home page:

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Where have I seen this before?

Compare that to Rich’s:

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I knew it looked familiar!

Rich’s looks more professional all the way around.  And I can’t help but noticing that in the photos block, Crist’s photos are basically all just of him, while Rich’s are of her and other people.  Charlie’s managing to turn Twitter into an anti-social media, I’m afraid.

For the sake of completeness. I’ll note that Rick Scott’s page is a bit stark in its design:

2014-01-02_13-39-36 But at least his photos aren’t all of himself.

What’s disturbing about Crist and Twitter aren’t the numbers or style themselves, per se. They can all be fixed long before the elections.  Rather, it’s the lack of effort that the Crist campaign is putting into social media. Given the cost of a bare-bones social media effort is so small, the lack of investment here, where the ROI is so high, makes me wonder about whether the campaign is getting the big things right, too.

Florida’s 2014 Governor Race on Twitter, April & May 2013

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The range of possible candidates for Florida’s 2014 gubernatorial race continues to grow even as many of the potential candidates remain coy about their intentions.  But most are not just playing coy, they’re playing dead on Twitter, judging by activity over the past two months:

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Only current governor Rick Scott has an ongoing, regular pulse on Twitter; the rest have a brief moment of activity and settle back down into quiet.

Other than the first wave of speculation about Bill Nelson’s candidacy it’s been fairly quiet for him.  I will  add Pam Iorio this month and will have her data starting with the June charts.  So far, though, she’s not creating a big impact on Twitter.

As you can see from the charts, only Will Weatherford and Charlie Crist have an ongoing ability to generate talk on a level similar to Rick Scott.  With the state’s legislative season coming to an end, it will be interesting to see if Weatherford continues to generate conversation or disappears back into the noise.

And poor Nan Rich — even though she is more or less the only declared democratic candidate she can’t get a break from the party or from Twitter.  I’ll look at her candidacy on Twitter in more detail later on this month.

About those websites of Florida’s US Senate candidates

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It’s been raining all Sunday, which killed my plans for the day.  So I grabbed something off the back burner: what the heck are the senate candidates doing for their web sites?

The amazing thing is that almost all candidate web sites look alike these days. Splash screen asking for money.  Then into the main site: Big photo on the top, sometimes with several pictures rotating through, showing the candidate. often with adoring voters. Buttons for social media, making a donation, and signing up for news letter on the top or down a side. Tweets/Facebook Likes somewhere. A menu bar with 5 or so choices.  Dark (usually blue) borders on the left and right framing the content. Some text about why the candidate is the very best one could have ever hoped for.

Click on this to enlarge

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Florida GOP US Senate Primary Tracking: So Long, George LeMieux Edition – 6/24/2012

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Last week, George LeMieux announced he was exiting the GOP primary for US Senate in Florida.  Which, ironically, gave him his “best” week on Twitter:

Click on image to enlarge

I’ve added Dave Weldon into the list starting 6/16; he’s not making much of a splash so far, but let’s see where he goes.

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Update on Florida Senate Race

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With the republican primary looking like it will go to Connie Mack IV, I thought it would be nice to check in on how the candidates are doing on Twitter:

Click on chart to enlarge

Connie Mack’s Twitter activity is like Tigger: bouncy bouncy bouncy.  Endorsements keep rolling in for him, and his focus has to be shifting to the general election.  But there’s still not a lot of mentions of Bill Nelson in tweets about Mack, so November is not yet on the public’s radar.

McCalister, on the other hand, has flatlined.  I actually panicked for a moment thinking I must have missed his pulling out of the campaign.  But no, he’s still there. Twitter was never his thing, to be fair.

George LeMieux is still around, but he too almost lost his pulse on Twitter until the Florida Federation of Young Republicans annual conference produced a surge of activity.  Now days, I think his name is mostly mentioned in the context of Charlie Crist and the Jim Greer trial.  George is stuck with Charlie like some sort of bad buddy movie.

But all’s not well on Twitter for Mack … there’s a shadow trailing him, keeping up but keeping his distance.  That shadow is Bill Nelson, waiting for the general election cycle to get under way…  Let’s see what happens with him towards the end of August.