As the biggest political battle has begun after the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the schedule of general elections on March 10, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has an edge over its rivals on social media platforms.

However, the fight on the virtual world remains neck to neck as social media warriors are busy popularising their leaders.

A social media sentiments analysis of the last 10 days (March 6 to 16) of leading political leaders Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi, Arun Jaitley, Smriti Irani, Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati and Priyanka Gandhi shows that Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s search trend has shown a negative traction while BJP’s Smriti Irani is the most active leaders among all the above leaders.

The analysis was done by MyNation along with Cybersecurity NGO Root64 foundation. However, these trends are based on data captured from social media websites and other open sources and do not reflect the voting pattern. But at a time when social media is the biggest political campaigning platform, sentiment analysis is an indicator of the popularity of political leaders.

The insights show that Rahul Gandhi’s sentiments trend has shown a negative traction for the past couple of days on Twitter. Traction for Narendra Modi and Smriti Irani shows an upward shift. This indicates that more people on Twitter are searching for content related to them.

Interestingly, Smriti Irani has taken a lead in Tweet count distribution with 159 tweets followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley with 144 and 67 tweets respectively. In this department, Rahul Gandhi scores less than Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP supremo Mayawati.

 

“Smriti Irani and Narendra Modi have tweeted the most number of times which clearly shows that they want to share their opinion on almost every topic and activity around and so are getting good support from the public. Here Smriti Irani is emerging as the second most opinionated leader, we will have to see how this will help her gain votes,” explained Amit Dubey, founder, Root64 foundation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains dominant on social media space as his tweets are most favourited by netizens. The analysis shows that out of the total favourited tweets of all seven leaders, over 41 per cent people have liked Narendra Modi’s tweet. He is followed by Arun Jaitley and Akhilesh Yadav respectively. Mayawati in this department has done better than Smriti Irani, Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

“It is notable that responses for Narendra Modi’s tweets are consistently in his favour as he is receiving the most number of appreciations and favourable comments,” Amit said.

 

Interestingly, Priyanka Gandhi has received maximum number of responses for her tweets. Retweet Count Distribution shows that netizens have taken immense interest in Tweets posted by Priyanka who is new on micro-blogging platform and is also making her political debut. Her three tweets have reached maximum number of people. This can also be attributed to curiosity among the netizens on what she will be posting online. Rahul Gandhi has also performed at par with his sister who has managed to get more retweets than his political rivals. The Gandhi duo are followed by PM Modi, Smriti Irani and Arun Jaitley. Mayawati and Akhilesh do not give a fight to others in this case.

“Despite having only a few tweets, Priyanka’s tweets were shared most number of times. Interestingly, Rahul Gandhi is also supported by his followers equally. He has received the second most number of retweets with his fairly less number of opinions. He has made just 17 tweets as compared to 150+ tweets of Narendra Modi,” Amit Dubey explained.

Social media analysis was done using Opini8 Note AI-powered tool that gives in-depth insight on public perception and reach on social media platforms.