As polls show the U.S. Senate race between incumbent @LindseyGrahamSC and challenger @harrisonjaime may be tighter than many expected, comments on social media suggest Graham is facing a negative backlash in his home state while positive buzz about his challenger is growing.

The Social Media Insights Lab at the @UofSC analyzed more than 450,000 posts about @LindseyGrahamSC made in SC since 2014. The lab found that Graham’s popularity has trended downward since 2018. In fact the top hashtag #SendLindseyHome has been tweeted more than 5200 times.

“Before @realDonaldTrump took office in 2017, there were not many comments about Graham,” said lab manager Kaitlyn Park. “However, his vocal support of Trump got people talking. While Graham’s positions tended to play well with SC Republicans, they also produced a backlash.”

The analysis shows from 2014 through 2016 there weren’t many conversations about Graham and generally they were favorable. When @realDonaldTrump took office, conversations about @LindseyGrahamSC started to increase, spiking during three controversial periods of the presidency.

Graham’s full-throated defense of Kavanaugh produced the highest number of both positive and negative comments during the period analyzed. In September 2018, during the confirmation hearings for Kavanaugh, Graham was mentioned in 17,000 South Carolina posts.

As @lindseygrahamsc has campaigned for re-election, his presence on social has diminished. While the number of conversations about him has decreased in 2020, the tone of the comments has become increasingly negative, as evident by the top Twitter hashtag #SendLindseyHome.

“Our sentiment analysis shows that about 70 percent of the social media posts this year that mention @LindseyGrahamSC have been negative, which is astonishingly high,” said Park. “This may reflect the impact of the well-funded campaign by his opponent, @harrisonjaime.”

@harrisonjaime was virtually unknown to those on social media until he began campaigning in 2019. Since then, the number of posts mentioning him has continued to grow; this month (so far), Harrison actually passed @LindseyGrahamSC in number of mentions.

A sentiment analysis for 2019 and 2020 shows that while @LindseyGrahamSC has far more total mentions, he also has far more negative comments and proportionately fewer positive comments than his challenger @harrisonjaime. #scpol

“South Carolina is a Republican state and it is virtually impossible for a Democrat to win a statewide race,” said Randy Covington, a professor in the School of Journalism and Communications. “But this analysis shows @harrisonjaime has a shot.” #scpol

Read this and more on the @UofSC_CIC where the Social Media Insights Lab stays up to date on the latest trends and analyzes the social buzz on politics and more
http://bit.ly/SMILReports 
Who has your support in the 2020 SC Senate Race? @LindseyGrahamSC or @harrisonjaime? #scpol