Over the last nine months, we have collected data from social and news media, public opinion polls, debates, and campaign speeches and advertisements. Many of our earlier analyses focused on the battle for the Democratic nomination. Now, with just six weeks to go until Nov. 3, we are analyzing these data to unpack the issue landscape and campaign dynamics in the presidential election.

NMDSI’s Elecurator project is collecting and analyzing posts on major social media sites like Twitter and Reddit as well as on online blogs and forums about the top three issues on voters’ minds in the upcoming elections: the coronavirus pandemic, the economy and race relations. Check out our sentiment tracker, analyzing polarity on these three issues!

NMDSI’s Elecurator project is collecting and analyzing posts on major social media sites like Twitter and Reddit as well as on online blogs and forums about the top three issues on voters’ minds in the upcoming elections: the coronavirus pandemic, the economy and race relations. Read this methodology to understand our sentiment tracker.

Did candidates or journalists respond to what they saw on Twitter in a bottom-up fashion, in which a spike in tweets about an issue was followed by increased media and candidate attention to that issue? Or did the interactions follow a more top-down model, in which candidates and the news cycle drove social media discussion of policy issues? These questions, and more, are analyzed in this new blog post.