PHVOTE 2013

MANILA, Philippines —Twitter mirrors the 2013 election outcomes, with Grace Poe and Loren Legarda outperforming competition.

Rappler monitored the #PHVote hashtag for 3 days before and after the election. Following the Thursday proclamations, we identified and measured the sentiment tweets about each of the 12 winners. Based on the sentiment score, tweets were classified as either positive, neutral, or negative.

Tweets about the winning candidates demonstrate surprisingly similar sentiment distribution, scoring an average of 29% positive, 61% neutral, and 10% negative. Twitter users have strong, mostly positive opinions about Grace Poe, who stands out with the highest positive (61%) and lowest neutral (28%) score. At the other end of the spectrum, Gringo Honasan leads in negative tweets with 30%.

People tweeted more frequently going into election day, favoring Grace Poe and Loren Legarda as polls opened. The Twitter favorites lead the pack at the ballot-box as well, gaining 20,147,423 and 18,482,961 votes respectively at last count.

Tweet traffic peaked at different times for UNA and Team PNoy, which otherwise scored similarly. UNA saw a flurry of activity on Monday and Tuesday morning. Team PNoy's traffic spiked in response to the announcement Thursday of winning the final three seats.