Harper plagued by negative online comments going into election: expert

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Few political observers predicted a Liberal majority going into Election Day, but one social media expert did by analyzing online commentary.

Tom Vassos is the author of 2015 Canadian Social Media Voters’ Pulse, which analyzed major campaign issues, negative vs. positive comments for each candidate, as well as the party and overall sentiment for each campaign.

Vassos says there was a major shift this year when it came to negative comments from 2011 according to the data, compiled with the help of the Sales Force Marketing Cloud.

Four years ago, four party leaders received more negative than positive ones, but this year, only Stephen Harper fell in that category.

“Everything from the niqab issue to the Trans Pacific Partnership to what he was doing with not allowing refugees into the country quick enough, so there were several issues that people latched onto,” he said. “As a result of that, there was thousands and thousands of negative comments on social media, which then led to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people seeing those comments.”

In 2011, it was the Bloc Quebecois which had the most negative comments according to Vassos’ data, with the Conservatives, NDP and Liberals bunched together.

“When we analyzed this sentiment data, it was clear to us that we had a Liberal majority coming and that’s why we called it even before the election happened,” he said. “Stephen Harper was at 230 per cent negative comments vs. positive comments.”

The top political comments discussed online included taxes, TPP, niqab and the middle class, while issues such as climate change, student and household debt were at the bottom.

Vassos dismisses the idea there was any influence from the mainstream media.

“I think mainstream media does attempt to head down the path of the issues that they think are most important, but once you can actually analyze millions of conversations, you actually get some surprises of what people really are talking about and what they’re saying about it,” he said.

Although every party understands the importance of social media in their campaigning, it can also lead to embarassing moments with candidates having to step down because of questionable or embarassing behaviour, caught on camera or some other way.

And Vassos added that is one of the big lessons to take away.

“Social media is something that never disappears and we know have this track record of several years worth of people’s positions on topics and comments they make and comments quite frankly that embarass them,” he said.