Abstract
Election 2016 saw two historically unpopular presidential candidates atop the major party tickets. For both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, casting one’s fate with their party’s presidential nominee carried an unusual amount of risk in 2016. This raises the question as to whether incumbent members of the House of Representatives avoided talking about their own party’s nominee and instead focused on the out-party’s nominee. A dataset of congressional tweets collected during the final month of the campaign was analyzed to answer this question. Findings indicate that tweeting about the tops of the tickets was limited. While Democrats tweeted about both presidential candidates, Republicans largely avoided tweeting about their nominee, Donald Trump.
This research was supported by a grant from the Dirksen Congressional Center.
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Gervais, B.T. (2018). What to Tweet when the Top Is Toxic? Gauging References to the 2016 Presidential Candidates in House Members’ Social Media Posts. In: Foreman, S., Godwin, M. (eds) The Roads to Congress 2016. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58094-4_4
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