LAS VEGAS — While 2016 Democratic presidential hopefuls took to the stage during last nights debate, those watching the party's first presidential debate took to social media to give their impressions of the candidates.
Social media analytics company NetBase kept track of the social media reactions throughout the night to decide who was the winner and who was the loser according to those watching the debate.
Hilary Clinton was declared the winner by CNN in the immediate aftermath of the debate, and this seemed to be justified by social media reactions. NetBase had Clinton in the negative when it came to her net sentiment, which they describe as "the total amount of positive comments to the total amount of negative comments around the candidate … calculated on a scale of -100 to +100." Over the course of the debate, however, she averaged 38 percent positive sentiment, up from negative one percent. This represents a change of plus 39 percent.
However, it was Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, who dominated social media, garnering 570,477 mentions on social media. His closest competition was Clinton, who raked in 427,456 mentions.
The social media hashtags also favored Sanders, with three of the top five hashtags ones generated by his media savvy — millennial dominated — campaign, #feelthebern, #debatewithbernie, and #berniesanders.
"Bernie Sanders’ message of getting people out there and be part of the process seemed to pay off as he had the highest number of mentions for any of the candidates," the NetBase site said.
Sanders went into the debate with a positive sentiment of 56 percent, and managed to increase it to 62 percent by the end of the night.
The other candidates struggled to gain traction on social media — perhaps in part due to having roughly half the speaking time of Clinton and Sanders according to CNN.
Former Virginia senator Jim Webb managed to collect 200,586 mentions on social media throughout the night, but most of them were not positive. Dropping from a positive 36 percent net sentiment at the start of the debate to zero at the end. According to NetBase, "Sometimes not talking is better. Most people picked up Jim Webb’s frustration at not getting the answering time he though he deserved. Most people saw this as negative, leading to his huge negative turn in net sentiment."
Favorability was high for Martin O’Malley, with his net sentiment rising from 28 percent to 59 percent by the end of the debate, but he only managed to get 78,917 social media mentions.
Lincoln Chafee, former governor of Rhode Island, gathered 68,312 mentions to to be the least mentioned candidate, but he fell from a net sentiment of 44 percent down to 23 percent by the end of the night, the second worst drop in sentiment of the night.
Overall, the debate itself started at 65 percent positive sentiment, but by the end it had dropped to 18 percent.
Freeman Stevenson is a staff writer for DeseretNews,com