One year into Donald Trump’s presidency, YouGov TweetIndex shows how Americans feel about more than 2,000 of the President’s Twitter posts
In more ways than one, it may be fair to describe Donald Trump as the first Social Media President. Not only has Trump utilised his social media presence to communicate in a way no statesman has before, he also credits social media with his election victory, saying back in October: “I doubt I would be here if it weren’t for social media, to be honest with you.”
Recognising that Trump’s relationship with Twitter is unprecedented among heads of state, shortly after his ascendancy to the presidency YouGov set up TweetIndex, a website that shows how American’s feel about each of the President’s tweets.
On a daily basis in the US, a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Americans rates each of Donald Trump’s tweets from the day before on a five-point scale going from “great” to “terrible.” Each tweet is assigned a score based on the results, from a potential high of +200 to a potential low of -200. Over the past year YouGov TweetIndex has posted ratings on all 2,063 tweets the President has made from 4 February 2017 to 19 January 2018.
With the, first anniversary of Trump’s becoming President, YouGov TweetIndex provides an overview of how well received the Commander-in-Tweet’s updates have been, as well as showing what his most and least well-received posts have been.
Overview
The average Trump tweet has a score of -8 among all Americans, with 38% of the President’s tweets receive a net positive score among the general population.
Among Republicans, the average Trump tweet scores +97. In fact, out of all 2,063 of the tweets the President made over the time period only one receives a net negative score among Republicans; an attack on fellow billionaire Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and star of Shark Tank, the US version of Dragon’s Den) which scored -18 among red voters.
By contrast, among Democrats the average Trump tweet scores -85. Only 73 tweets (3.5% of the total) have a net positive score.
Opinions among Independents tend to be relatively close to those of the general population as a whole. The average tweet score among this group was -3, with 44% of Trump's tweets being seen positively overall.
Trump’s most unpopular tweets
The President's worst-performing tweets have been when he takes on other famous names. Of his eleven tweets with the lowest scores, six are focused on slamming famous businessmen Mark Cuban (-81) and LaVar Ball (a two-tweet thread scoring -67), news presenters Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski (a two-tweet thread scoring -78 and a later tweet scoring -77), and Arnold Schwarzenegger (-69).
The remaining tweets in the bottom eleven were attacks on former FBI director James Comey (-70), Republican Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker (-67), and two against news outlet CNN (both -66).
Unpopular recent posts include a tweet attacking Michael Wolff (author of a recent book on the Trump election campaign) and ‘Sloppy’ Steve Bannon, which is his joint-twelfth most unpopular with a score of -65, his thread about being a “very stable genius” (joint 40th at -57), and his claims to have a bigger and more powerful nuclear button than North korea (also joint 40th at -57).
Trump’s most popular tweets
In contrast to Trump’s most unpopular tweets, which single out individuals, his most popular tend to recognise groups. Of the 13 tweets with the highest scores, ten contain praise for military service personnel and veterans, emergency service workers or Hurricane Harvey relief volunteers.
The other three tweets consist of a message of well wishes for Senator John McCain and his family from when he was undergoing cancer surgery (+73), a happy independence day tweet from July 4th (+78) and a plea to those in the path of Hurricane Irma to heed warnings from local and state officials (+82).
Photo: Getty
