Here is an analysis of candidates from four political parties on Twitter. There you will find lots of statistics and graphs to show the candidates' use of Twitter. This analysis is primarily based on data and not the candidates' use of social media.

We searched the candidates with their names on Twitter in order to find their official accounts, except in cases where the party indicated Twitter presences on the website.

Parties analysed: Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ), Parti Québécois (PQ), Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) and Québec Solidaire (QS). You can see the study on the parties' Twitter accounts on our blog .

Limitation of the study  : As some party websites were not up to date, we relied, in some cases, on official party Twitter lists. The Twitter account analyzed was that of the candidate and not of the county when both existed. The data was collected from March 17 to 22, 2014.

Parties and their candidates on Twitter

NUMBER OF CANDIDATES

The party with the most candidates on Twitter is the PQ, which has 71 . Then come the PLQ with 68, QS with 37 and finally the CAQ with 21 candidates on Twitter.

In the study conducted in 2012 , the PLQ came out on top with 64 candidates who used Twitter. 

NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS

If we look at the number of subscribers totaled by the candidates , one party stands out from the others: the PQ with more than 327,371 subscribers.

In 2012, the PQ was already in the lead with 138,246 subscribers.

The star candidates of the PQ alone total 57% of the total:

NUMBER OF SUBSCRIPTIONS

If we look at the  number of subscriptions totaled by the candidates on Twitter , it is the PQ candidates who are subscribed to the largest number of users, i.e. 64,862.

In 2012, Québec Solidaire came out on top with 30,834 subscriptions.

SUBSCRIBERS / SUBSCRIPTIONS RATIO

In terms of the  ratio between the number of account subscribers and the number of account subscriptions  – which is normally a sign of popularity – it's the CAQ's turn to shine with a ratio of 6.41 subscribers per subscription. The PQ is not far behind with a ratio of 5.05. A party is more attentive to its subscribers by subscribing to them in turn.

In 2012, it was already the CAQ that had the best subscriber/subscription ratio, but with a ratio of 4.949

NUMBER OF TWEETS PER CANDIDATE

An indicator of the age of Twitter accounts is the number of tweets. The older an account is, the more tweets it will have in general. The party with the most tweets is the CAQ with an average of 2069 tweets per candidate . This figure is very high since there are a few users with a lot of tweets. If we remove the top 2 in terms of number of tweets published, the average would drop to 470.

The CAQ is the party with the highest number of tweets per candidate with an average of 4320 tweets. On the other hand, this figure changes a lot if we remove the top 5 users of each party. The new averages are: CAQ: 531 / QS: 271 / PLQ: 701 / PQ: 1171

CANDIDATES

TOP 10 CANDIDATES

There are currently 197 candidates on Twitter, according to official party lists and websites. These 197 candidates have an average of 3083 subscribers and 801 subscriptions . 

The most popular candidate on Twitter is Léo Bureau-Blouin, of the PQ party  with more than 53,900 followers. Here are the top 10 candidates with the most followers on Twitter. The digit to the right of the party corresponds to the  Klout score . We notice that the highest Klout score is Jean-François Lisée with a score of 70.

NUMBER OF MENTIONS PER CANDIDATE

If we look at the number of mentions per candidate (from April 8 to 22)  we can see that Philippe Couillard has the most mentioned Twitter account of all with 15,512 mentions in the last two weeks. The number of mentions unfortunately does not indicate the sentiment (positive or negative) of the tweets.

NUMBER OF MENTIONS OF THE DIFFERENT CANDIDATES ON TWITTER FROM APRIL 8 TO APRIL 22

Thomas