Decoding the Social Pulse: A Deep Dive into Sentiments from the New Hampshire GOP Primary

It is no longer news that former President Donald Trump defeated Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire primary, bringing him closer to being the Republican presidential nominee. Donald Trump won the primaries with 54.5% (169,620 votes), while Nikki Haley received 43.3% (134,829 votes).

According to reports, Donald Trump is the first non-incumbent Republican contender in modern history to win the Iowa and New Hampshire GOP primaries. With the #NewHamphirePrimary generating a lot of online talk, the SMLC team took a quick look at the social media conversations around the GOP New Hampshire primary using Spinklr during and after the event over 24 hours. Here are a few fascinating facts.

A review of the conversations revealed over 64,558 mentions and a reach of more than 1.01 billion, with most of the conversation on the X platform. In addition, the study revealed a sentiment score with positive mentions at 61.6% and negative mentions at 38.3%. Examining the most active age gap, millennials from 18 to 35 were the most active, with over 11.2k mentions, followed by the middle-aged group, ages 35-60, with over 6.28k mentions.

Nevertheless, upon a thorough examination of the sentiment scores, it became evident that a significant number of social media users, particularly within the specified active age group, expressed joy over former President Donald Trump’s victory in the #NewHampshirePrimaries election, with a prevailing mixed theme centered on sharing personal happiness and taking our country back and culture. Here are some of the tweets featuring positive mentions.

To provide a well-rounded perspective, let’s explore some critical tweets to gain insights into users’ perspectives and responses to the #NewHampshirePrimary. According to Sprinklr, the most negative mentions stemmed from users’ perceptions expressing discontent with how Democrats played a pivotal role in supporting Nikki Haley’s candidacy. Here are a few examples of these tweets.

Despite these user chats, a report from USAToday, claims that New Hampshire has a closed primary, which means that voters can only vote in a political primary if they are registered members of that party or undeclared. Someone registered as a Democrat cannot vote in the GOP primary because the deadline for changing party affiliation was in October 2023.

Although the #NewHampshirePrimary has come to an end, emerging conversations around former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to suspend her campaign are in top gear; Nikki Haley has made it bold to state that the race was “far from over” as she pledged to stay in it.  The upcoming GOP Presidential primaries are scheduled in Nevada and the Virgin Islands. Nevertheless, both candidates are currently focusing on a clash in the South Carolina primary.

Author: Bowale Odukale