Kenny Murray delves into social media analytics to see who is winning the battle online.
It was a competition many never expected and in recent days, it has been overshadowed by the continuing frenzy on who will lead Labour in Scotland. However we thought it’d be prudent to have a look at the competition for Nicola Sturgeon’s replacement as she ascends to the top job in Scottish parliamentary politics.
Now, Facebook doesn’t give much scope for analysis so let’s take a look at the topline stats of page likes:
- Stewart Hosie – 1,584
- Angela 4 Deputy – 1,581 likes
- Keith Brown – 581 likes
Stewart Hosie narrowly beats Angela 4 Deputy to the post, however – he uses his own MP page, Ms Constance has set up a brand new page dedicated to her leadership campaign – so we believe she wins this round, followed by Stewart Hosie in second place and Keith Brown in dead last with a paltry 581 likes.
Let’s more specifically focus on Twitter – after all it was the main vehicle for debate among the talking shop during the independence referendum, although many did wrongly predict a resounding Yes win due to the social media statistics – we could be on the wrong track altogether, alternatively we may be 100% right.
So, where do they sit on follower count?
@StewartHosieMP has a decent 7,791 followers at our last check
@AConstanceMSP has a very good 7,145 followers some of whom may be backing her
@KeithBrownMSP has a smaller 6,886 followers reading his thoughts
So again, Stewart Hosie seems to be winning, with Angela in second place, ever so closely and early favourite Keith Brown is in dead last.
Using Topsy (see below), we can see that if the vote was to be decided purely on who gained most mentions via Twitter, then Keith Brown would win hands down – followed by Stewart Hosie and in last place with less than a fourth of the tweets that mention Keith Brown, Angela Constance.
To be fair, that’s not the only method – these tweets could be attacking them or simply mentioning them. Let’s take a look at the sentiment score. This scores the tweets based on their tone and what sentiment they imply, the higher the score – the more supportive they are.
Keith Brown
Topsy, gives Mr Brown a sentiment score of 63 – which is quite good going for a politician. If this was an approval rating, it could be looked on very favourably. Although this comes from a sample of just over 4,000 tweets it’s probably accurate to a good degree of what the Transport Minister has experienced online. 
It’s not just sentiment score though, how many twitter users have declared their vote for Keith Brown? 198.
Angela Constance
Ms Constance does pretty well considering the smaller sample size – a sentiment score of 55 is not to be sniffed at – however is it several points lower than Keith Brown who for once, seems to be winning in one vein of this competition online. 
How many people have made their vote public for Angela Constance though? An impressive 151 declared voters online.
Stewart Hosie
Stewart Hosie wins yet again, with the highest sentiment score, admittedly from a lower sample than Keith Brown, Stewart gains a sentiment score of 65, only marginally more favourable than Keith Brown.
How many publicly declared votes does he have though? 37.
So who will win?
Ultimately that’s up to the SNP membership but combining a number of factors, social media predicts it for Keith Brown. Going from the positive sentiment score, the larger support base online and success across all channels – if social media is to be trusted Keith Brown will be the Depute Leader of the SNP come 10am on Friday 14 November.