Deciphering the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign in the Twitter Sphere: A Comparison of the Trumpists and Clintonists

TL;DR

This study analyzes Twitter follower demographics of Trump and Clinton during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, revealing differences in social influence polarization, age distribution, and racial diversity among their followers.

Contribution

It introduces a unique dataset US2016 with detailed follower profiles and provides novel insights into demographic differences between the candidates' supporters on Twitter.

Findings

Trump supporters are more polarized in social influence.

Trump supporters tend to be either very young or very old.

Clinton supporters are more racially diverse.

Abstract

In this paper, we study follower demographics of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the two leading candidates in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. We build a unique dataset US2016, which includes the number of followers for each candidate from September 17, 2015 to December 22, 2015. US2016 also includes the geographical location of these followers, the number of their own followers and, very importantly, the profile image of each follower. We use individuals' number of followers and profile images to analyze four dimensions of follower demographics: social status, gender, race and age. Our study shows that in terms of social influence, the Trumpists are more polarized than the Clintonists: they tend to have either a lot of influence or little influence. We also find that compared with the Clintonists, the Trumpists are more likely to be either very young or very old. Our study finds no gender affinity effect for Clinton in the Twitter sphere, but we do find that the Clintonists are more racially diverse.