Primary Election Day: A Look at How Local Candidates Are and Are Not Using Twitter

Today, Tuesday, May 16, 2017 is Primary Election Day in the state of Pennsylvania. I am particularly interested to see how the turnout for this local election compares to previous primary elections that occur after a presidential election. Since November, there has been an incredible volume of posts on social media about getting involved in local issues. The turnout today will be an interesting metric of if posting about local politics translates into voting locally.

I have been following the election on Twitter all day and out of curiosity, I wanted to see what the candidates are tweeting about today. As I was building a Twitter list of candidates, I was a little surprised to find that many of the candidates on the ballot in the City of Pittsburgh are not on Twitter. I’ve put together a list of candidate that are on the ballot in Pittsburgh with their Twitter handles and # of followers today. Given that the current President of the United States uses Twitter on a daily basis, and that Twitter is used by many politicians in Washington to communicate with constituents, I expected that more of the local candidates would have Twitter accounts.

I have excluded the judicial candidates and magistrate races from this list. Of the 20 candidates listed only 11 have Twitter accounts, (handles are listed below) and not all of them are very active.

The only candidates that have posted at least one tweet today are @tkailsmith , @FifeMyers , @DanielGilman , @BillPeduto & @AshleighDeemer.

You can follow our Twitter list of Pittsburgh primary candidates here. Live stream of candidate tweets is included below.

A Twitter List by iheartpgh