Sentimental Analysis of the 2016 Election

LeAnn Lo 11/22/16

Hillary Clinton

In this election, Twitter has become an important platform for candidates to voice their opinion on current events, other candidates, and propose their own policies. Hillary herself is a big tweeter and notably tweets at major media sources such as @CNN and @Time. She is also shown to tweet at regular users of Twitter as well.

The Polarity of Reactions Towards Hillary Clinton

There have been many differing opinions of Hillary Clinton during this election. This is depicted in the bar plot. The majority of the polarity is positive however there is still a prominent negative polarity. This election is still considered the most polarizing due to the strongly opposing platforms. However we can conclude that twitter has a more positive outlook on Hillary Clinton.

This wordcloud depicts which certain “key words” have a positive or negative connotation when used in a tweet. Interestingly, words like “ethics” and Clinton’s name herself is considered negative. Also “bill”, the name of former president and her husband, Bill Clinton is present in the negative category. Positively polarized words include “donations” which is likely encouraged by the Clinton team. Neutral words include “Trump” and @washingtonpost, while there are a large variety of opinions towards her opponent, supporting or disapproving of Trump does not necessarily mean that they oppose or support Hillary.

According to this map of Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland, the polarity of each state is indicated by a color. The more red the state, the more positive its outlook is on Hillary Clinton. It appears that Virginia and Maryland have a much more positive polarity compared to its bordering states. This is likely due to their proximity to Washington D.C, a very democratic state. Pennsylvania is more split in terms of polarity while West Virginia has an overall negative opinion of Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump

Donald Trump himself is a very big tweeter with nearly three times as many tweets than Hillary Clinton. However, he does not interact as much with other twitter users and instead tweets more to his followers. There are fewer media or corporate accounts and many more typical twitter users in Donald Trump’s twitter network. Overall, the network is much less occupied and clustered as Clinton’s.

The Polarity of Reactions Towards Donald Trump

Much like Clinton, Trump also has many differing opinions during this election. According to the bar plot, the polarity is more split than Hillary who still had a strong majority of positive polarity. There a considerable negative polarity and a small majority of positive polarity.

This word cloud depicts certain key terms that are postively, negatively, and neutrally connotated with Trump’s twitter prescence. Interestingly, Clinton appears in his negative category while his name was not considered negative in Clinton’s campaign. His own name appears in both the positive and negative category due to the strong opposing sides of whether people supported or despised Trump. “America” also appears to have a negative polarity which seems highly unusual since “Make America Great Again” was such a pivotal slogan for his campaign and should be considered positive to his followers. However, Trump’s opposition likely used “America” in a negative connotation when discussing Trump’s candidacy.

The polarity of Donald Trump in terms of four states: Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania is depicted in this color coded map. Virginia and Maryland share a very negative sentiment towards Trump due to their democratic leaning stances. While West Virginia is typically a Republican state, it has a slightly more positive polarity towards Trump. Pennsylvania, on the other hand, has a very high positive opinion towards Trump. Interestingly, Pennsylvania also had a relatively high polarity towards Hillary Clinton. However, according to the scale, Clinton has a higher positive polarity in Pennyslvania compared to Trump.