BOULDER, CO — The third GOP debate took place Wednesday night on CNBC, in which the top 10 candidates again took the stage to try to win voters for the upcoming primary. As they did, viewers took to social media to voice their opinions on how candidates were doing.
Here’s a look at the debater’s performance as gathered from publicly available social media posts throughout the debate, as reported by the social media analytics company NetBase.
Overall, there were 1,101,993 mentions on social media specific to the debate. This was more than 700,000 less than the previous debate, reflecting the debate not being streamed online by CNBC and competition with the World Series. But Netbase official Patrick Brennan said he thinks this gives a clearer picture of GOP voters views. Because of the smaller viewership "it was a lot more of a core viewership commentating on the event … it was more of the Republican base," he said.
In mentions, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, had the best night of all the candidates, garnering 128,214 mentions on social media throughout the debate, more than Donald Trump’s 119,204, marking the first time that Trump has been out-mentioned in one of the debates. Cruz also managed to improve his net sentiment —"the total amount of positive comments to the total amount of negative comments around the candidate … calculated on a scale of -100 to +100," according to Netbase — during the debate to a positive 50 percent from 24 percent.
Donald Trump did manage however to stay near the top of the pack, with the second most mentions at 119,204. Trump’s social media campaign also pulled far ahead of the others, with the hashtag #trump2016 being the top hashtag for the night, with 7,521 mentions. Cruz’s own social media hashtag of #cruzcrew managed just 2,493 mentions. Trumps "branding qualities" enabled him to maintain a lead on easily recognized campaign slogans, Brennan said.
Trump was also able to increase his net sentiment from 24 percent to 41 percent.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida took a distant third in mentions with 75,811, but managed to comfortably increase his net sentiment from 29 percent to 43 percent. He has also managed to defend himself well from attacks from Jeb Bush early in the debate.
Ben Carson, who is leading the race in Iowa according to recent polls, had a fairly mild performance on social media. With just 61,731 mentions on social media, he was also only able to increase his net sentiment to 15 percent, up from 7 percent. In fact, according to social media users, only Jeb Bush and Gov. Jim Kasich had lower net sentiment at the end of the debate, with eight percent — up from negative two — and 14 percent respectively.
Jeb Bush, the favored establishment candidate, continued to fail to push to the front of the pack. With no big moments during the debate, he only managed 53,706 mentions. Though his net sentiment did improve by 10 percent.
Carly Fiorina, who used her opening line to criticize people saying she doesn't smile enough, managed 35,505 mentions and improved her net sentiment from eight percent to 27 percent.
Gov. Chris Christie gained lots of support over his deriding of the moderates questions about fantasy football, but still only had 35,505 mentions. But had a comfortable net sentiment gain from 32 percent to 40 percent.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, had 34,029 mentions, and the second most popular hashtag, with #standwithrand having 6,494 mentions. He also managed to increase his favorability more than any other candidate on the stage, rising from 17 percent pre-debate to 48 percent by the end, the highest gain of any of the candidates, and also netting him the highest net sentiment rating of any of the candidates.
Kasich did manage to get 28,020 mentions on social media, but avoided gaining anything in terms of sentiment, starting and ending the debate at 14 percent.
"He almost would have gotten the same amount of net sentiment if he hadn’t been there," Brennan remarked.
Mike Huckabee took a distant last place, with only 8,671 mentions during the debate, and only a net sentiment increase of two, going from 32 percent to 34 percent.
The debate will perhaps best be remembered not for fiery exchanges between the candidates, but instead tension between the candidates and the conservative audience with the CNBC moderators. Throughout the debate, the debaters and moderators argued over speaking time, and the candidates and audience were openly critical of the questions being asked. The audience even booed twice.
"There was an element of chaos [to the debate]," Brenna commented.
The top three trending topics for the debate were about moderators, the questions, and the term "weakness," highlighting viewers negative feelings about how the debate was run.
The debate overall ended with a positive sentiment of 28 percent. But rather than reflect a favorable view, Netbase officials say this better represents support for the candidates than the debate itself, with the largely conservative audience responding positively to the candidates attacks on the media’s perceived support of the democrats.
"When [the viewers] saw the candidates reply to what they say as partisan questions, that lead to really enthusiastic support from people who were watching the debate," said Brennan. "It was less about the debate itself and more about the candidates."
Freeman Stevenson is a staff writer for DeseretNews.com.