Can three weeks of increased chatter and negative sentiment across social channels completely derail a Presidential campaign? Since sexual harassment charges against Herman Cain broke on Sunday October 30, social conversation around the candidate has been at a consistently higher and more negative level than before the 30th. Recent Gallup polls indicate Cain’s intensity score is 17, down from 29 before the scandal broke.
The conversation across microblogs (like Twitter), blogs and social networks before and after the story broke showed a more than a 200 percent increase in chatter about Cain, from 9,100 mentions on October 30 to 28,310 on October 31, remaining high throughout the week as a third accusation emerged and Cain tried to pin the blame on Rick Perry for starting the storm (see our blog post last week).
Things didn’t die down at all last week, when Cain’s volume actually went up from a total of 152,479 mentions the week the scandal broke, to 158,386.
And when it looked like he might get a break, other events this week kept Cain’s volume up. The week of October 30, fellow candidate Rick Perry was busy battling allegations that he delivered a speech while drunk on Friday October 28 in New Hampshire, and last week, his “oops” moment from the CNBC sponsored presidential debate on Nov. 9th sent social media into an uproar (see “The OOPS Heard ’round the World” for a deeper analysis on this).
Cain had his own “oops” moment this week when asked whether he supported Obama’s strategies in Libya and couldn’t quite formulate an answer. We imagine that this accounts for quite a bit of the sustained chatter from the 15th to date. But any way you cut it, Cain’s overall volume since October 30 is way up.
Analysis of sentiment showed an increase in negative conversation since the day the news broke. Prior to the scandal, roughly 20 percent of social chatter around Cain was negative, while since the news broke, 37 percent has been considered negative, spread pretty evenly across the last three weeks.
Compare this to the same time period for Obama (11 percent negative), Perry (12 percent) and Gingrich (11 percent) and you can see that Cain has a real problem on his hands.
