[URBAN NOTE] "Why candidates who were #topoli Twitter favs didn’t win"

[rfmcdonald]

Jessica Smith Cross' article in today's issue of Metro makes the point that prominence on social networking platforms does not automatically lead to political success. At very best, it's a helpful stepping stone on route to said.

In the campaign for Etobicoke North Ward 2, Andray Domise won Twitter but lost the election—just don’t call it a cautionary tale.

“Cautionary tale, my black ass,” Domise wrote in response to that suggestion, in a blog post thanking his supporters.

Domise placed third in the ward, with only eight per cent of the votes. He is high on the list of the most influential Toronto politics Twitter users compiled by the data analysts at Vox Pop Labs (44th of more than 25,000 retweeted users of the hashtag), who scored users on the retweets they got from other accounts using the #topoli hashtag.

Domise’s official campaign account and his campaign manager were also high on the Twitterati list—as were a number of candidates who didn’t win in their wards. #topoli favourites—among them Alejandra Bravo, Idil Burale, Alex Mazer and Keegan Henry-Mathieu—were defeated by incumbents with relatively poor social media campaigns.

According to the Domise campaign, social media worked for him, despite the loss. It amplified Domise’s message and earned him mainstream media support and endorsements. Volunteers and donations flooded in from across the city. By the end of the campaign, he’d boosted his name recognition in the ward to 70 per cent from practically nothing.