Description
If you have yet to see the Twitter Political Index then you haven’t missed much.
The “TPI” was released with the idea that one could get a pulse of Romney’s and Obama’s positive name identification on Twitter. Theoretically, it is supposed to show how popular that candidate is versus all other topics on a given day.
We at The Trenches have been watching it for a while now and will release more of what we have learned in a #5G warfare article soon. But one thing is happening right now that earns the TPI a fubar.
We wrote a little Google App that sucks down the published TPI data and then runs it through a basic statistical test and graphs the result. Here’s the graph:
What does that tell you? It says that most of the TPI is noise. When the Gold line goes above the top gray line then Obama is getting statistically significant Twitter love. When the Gold line goes under the bottom gray line Romney is getting statistically significant Twitter love.
According to Twitter.
Now notice October 1st. See how Obama spent much of September decaying in Twitter love to the point that Romney was about to break into statistically significant Twitter love territory? Then - sudden reversal! What happened? The debate. The debate that Obama completely lost. The debate that Twitter touted :
First of the #debates generated 10.3 million Tweets in 90 minutes — a political-event record. Chart of peaks: twitter.com/gov/status/253…
— Twitter Government (@gov) October 4, 2012
Get that? Obama’s failure was tweeted heavily. Romney’s win was tweeted heavily. So were the subsequent meltdowns and back biting. The meltdowns continue today:
I’m trying to rally some morale, but I’ve never seen candidate this late in game, so far ahead, just throw in the towel:thebea.st/RrBEcK
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) October 8, 2012
Yet look at the widening gap in favor of Obama in the Twitter Political Index, which is what the Gold line shows. Either Twitter only serves a small community that runs counter to the entire country (and those 10 million tweets in 90 minutes didn’t count) or the TPI is utter bull shit.
Then again, you never know what is going on in the minds that run Twitter.