WA Votes 2013 – the key players (on Twitter)

Over the next couple of months, I will be collecting and analysing Twitter data (technology permitting) around the WA state election, to be held on 9 March 2013: see this post for an introduction to this project.

As we approach the election campaign proper, now is a good time to examine which politicians and candidates are already on Twitter, and which of these users are particularly active – and who is not here (especially if new accounts appear before 9 March). For most of these accounts, it is not stated whether it is the politician/candidate themselves, or their staff, who is tweeting, although it is assumed that many candidates are writing their own posts.

Sitting members

Liberal:

As noted in earlier posts, the WA Liberal presence on Twitter is minimal; only a few sitting members use Twitter, and while there is a party account (LiberalsWA), the major figures in the government are not on Twitter. There is no official account for the Premier, Colin Barnett, for example, nor for the Treasurer Troy Buswell (although this might be deliberate in this case, given the party’s desire to restrict what candidates make public). Representing the Liberals, for now, on Twitter are instead backbenchers, including:

Albert Jacob: albertjacobmla (Member for Ocean Reef (Legislative Assembly)) [statistics as of 23 January 2013: 113 following,197 followers,169 tweets]

Mike Nahan: mikenahanmla (Member for Riverton (LA)) [6 following,121 followers,323 tweets]

Michael Sutherland: sutherlandmp (Deputy Speaker; Member for Mount Lawley (LA)) [as of 23 January 2013, 226 following, 369 followers,185 tweets]

Of these members, Jacob is currently the most active, commenting on policy announcements and posting rebuttals to ALP members on Twitter. Nahan’s tweets, on the other hand, mention other users very rarely (not a surprise, given Nahan only follows six other users), and instead feature links to content on Facebook. Sutherland has not yet been active around the election, and his tweeting style is mostly standalone tweets, a mixture of government announcements and ‘Did You Know?’ electorate facts.

ALP

WA Labor has a far more extensive presence on Twitter, as previously noted. Here, I have selected only the most active accounts, based on their total tweets, in addition to Mark McGowan:

Mark McGowan: MarkMcGowanMP (Leader of the Opposition; Member for Rockingham (LA)) [202 following,1419 followers,325 tweets]

Ken Travers: kentraversmlc (Shadow Transport/Finance Minister; North Metro Region (Legislative Council)) [897 following,1046 followers,5310 tweets]

John Hyde: johnhydemla (Shadow Minister for Local Government/Culture and the Arts/Heritage/ Citizenship and Multicultural Interests; Member for Perth (LA)) [1968 following,2092 followers,3500 tweets]

Ben Wyatt: benwyatt (Shadow Treasurer/Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs; Member for Victoria Park (LA)) [399 following, 1121 followers, 1012 tweets]

Roger Cook: RogerCookMLA (Deputy Leader of the Opposition/Shadow Minister for Health; Member for Kwinana (LA)) [469 following,946 followers,1157 tweets]

Paul Papalia: papsMLA (Shadow Treasurer/Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs; Member for Warnbro (LA)) [633 following,720 followers,1516 tweets]

As noted in previous posts, and seen through the maps included last time, many ALP members on Twitter will tweet at each other, at least, if not replying to other accounts (although journalists and opposition members are more likely to attract a response). McGowan is an exception to this, with the account in his name retweeting fellow ALP members and candidates, but not responding to other accounts. [Edit: Out of the politicians and candidates being tracked so far, John Hyde is both followed by and following the most accounts (only the unofficial Colin Barnett account has more followers, with 2676), while Ken Travers is the most prolific in terms of total tweets published.]

Nationals:

Leader Brendon Grylls (brendongrylls) has stepped up his tweeting, including following more accounts, since the start of the year [Member for Central Wheatbelt (LA), running for Pilbara (LA); 185 following,177 followers,20 tweets]. He still has a way to go to catch the total tweets by his colleague, and nominated successor for the Central Wheatbelt electorate, Mia Davies, though (MiaDaviesMLC – Agricultural Region (LC), running for Central Wheatbelt (LA); 633 following,720 followers,1516 tweets).

Greens:

The Upper House Greens are well-established on Twitter now, including the following members – and as will be seen below, they are accompanied by highly active candidates for both the Assembly and the Council. As with ALP members, the Greens members will retweet and reply to other users, including but not restricted to journalists and other politicians, as well as using Twitter to make party or electorate announcements:

Lynn MacLaren: lynnmaclaren (South Metro (LC) – 416 following,445 followers,357 tweets)

Robin Chapple: ChappleMLC (Mining and Pastoral (LC) – 29 following,351 followers,409 tweets)

Alison Xamon: AlisonXamon (East Metro (LC) – 180 following,501 followers,293 tweets)

Retiring Members and New Candidates:

Former Leader of the Opposition Eric Ripper, the current member for Belmont in the Legislative Assembly, remains a prominent voice on Twitter even though he is not running for re-election himself (ericrippermla – 262 following,1475 followers,1732 tweets). His nominated successor is Cassie Rowe (cassierowe – 250 following,244 followers,178 tweets)

In one of the potentially close electorates, Riverton, the Liberals’ Mike Nahan (above) is competing against an ALP candidate, Hannah Beazley, who is far more active on Twitter (hbeazleyalp) [543 following,685 followers,1088 tweets]). Another potentially close electorate is Fremantle, where the sitting independent (formerly Greens MP) Adele Carles (AdeleCarlesMP – 222 following,272 followers, 120 tweets) is up against the ALP candidate Simone McGurk (simonemcgurk – 665 following,1115 followers,884 tweets) and the Greens’ Andrew Sullivan (Sullivan4Freo – 164 following,46 followers, 114 tweets).

Further contests with representation on Twitter include Kwinana, where the ALP’s Roger Cook is against the independent Carol Adams, the Mayor of Kwinana (Carol_Adams1– 576 following,333 followers,935 tweets), as well as the Legislative Council electorates, which will most likely be explored further here as the campaign continues.

Candidates from the Nationals and the Greens have also taken to social media for their campaigns. Indeed, several Greens candidates are particularly active on Twitter; based on total tweets published up to 23 January 2013 (this includes non-election tweets from any time prior to this date), four Greens candidates have posted over 1000 tweets:

Cameron Poustie (CameronPoustie: North Metro – 1128 following,840 followers,2807 tweets)

George Crisp (DrGCrisp: Nedlands – 359 following,329 followers,1580 tweets)

Jonathan Hallett (JonathanHallett: Perth – 1101 following,635 followers,1167 tweets)

(The fourth Greens candidate, Jason Boudville, while having a very active Twitter account, at the time of writing was not (yet) using it for campaigning. Similarly, an ALP candidate, Patrick Ashforth, has also a high tweet count, but was not currently using Twitter for campaigning purposes)

Twitter activity so far – 9 January 2013 – 23 January 2013

While we’re still over a month away from election day, activity on Twitter around the campaigns is starting to increase, and it’s worth checking out which candidates are most active at the moment. While a candidate’s account might have 2000 tweets, these might all have been published two years ago, so the total tweets by themselves is not an accurate measure of who is commenting during the campaign. I’ve been taking snapshots of the total activity – # tweets, # users followed, # users following – for each candidate account in addition to capturing the text of tweets. These snapshots provide the opportunity to see who is most active during a set period, who is unusually active at this time, and which accounts are being followed by more, or fewer, people than before. As usual, it is worth bearing in mind that these statistics do not distinguish between election-related tweets and any other comments, and include tweets published as @replies to other users.

Most active candidates/politicians so far – most tweets, 9 January-23 January 2013:

Unsurprisingly, Ken Travers leads the way here; already a well-established node in the Twitter discussion of WA politics, Travers’s activity is also to be expected given the ALP’s announcement of the Metronet public transport plan (Travers is the Shadow Transport Minister). The ALP and Greens dominate this list, again as would be expected; one notable inclusion, though, is the independent Greg Ross, running in the Liberal-held electorate of Kalamunda. Having formally declared his nomination for the seat, Ross has increased his tweeting activity dramatically. This is more apparent in the following table, which shows the percentage of a user’s total tweets accounted for by the two weeks between 9 and 23 January (minimum of 10 tweets):

Most active candidates/politicians so far – Tweets (9 January-23 January 2013) as highest % of total activity:

These figures point to the use of social media by new candidates who are now starting their campaigns in earnest; only the final two entries in the list, Albert Jacob and Adele Carles, are sitting members. The high percentages of tweets published during these past two weeks suggests that these users had low tweet counts at the end of 2012, and that these accounts are campaign-specific (rather than being existing Twitter users first, and candidates later). Again, this is not a surprising finding, but it is a useful gauge of how representative – or exceptional – a high tweet count may be during a set period (or during the campaign) for individual users.

Finally, a quick look at which users are attracting the most new followers. This is based just on raw numbers, not on the identity of users – I’m only recording the totals, so the figures here are the difference between the number of users following an account on 9 January and 23 January respectively. There is a surprise here, as the unofficial Barnett account leads the way – suggesting that, even though the @premierbarnett account states that it is unofficial, Twitter users are still looking for the Premier on Twitter, and will follow the next closest thing (the account hasn’t tweeted this year, and its tweets are primarily links to media releases). Similarly, the individual, official account with the biggest increase is that of Mark McGowan, the ALP leader, suggesting that political leaders are focal points, and important sources to follow, even though most West Australians cannot vote either for or against them directly.

Biggest increase in followers, 9 January-23 January 2013:

These statistics, and the information about individual politician and candidate accounts, give us some idea of who is active on Twitter, and which accounts are being followed ahead of the election. As the campaign progresses, I will return to these statistics, to see how – and if – these patterns vary as we head towards 9 March.