Analysis: See what Twitter community thinks of BJP, Congress, AAP

Bangalore, April 7: Month of March was full of election campaigns by each of the political party. Based on 900,000 tweets collected from 15 states about three major political parties (BJP, Congress and AAP), our analysis shows how people talked about and reacted to each political party.

Using Twitris, their Collective Social Intelligence platform, Professor Amit Sheth led the researchers at the Ohio Center of Excellence in Knowledge-enabled Computing (Kno.e.sis) at Wright State University processed each tweet to compute sentiment about the mentioned political party. One parameter to measure popularity is to check which political party gets most positive sentiment or least negative sentiment. Just counting negative (or positive) sentiments on a politician provides, as in this Deccan Herald story, provides little useful information about the state of electorate.

Here is our primary analysis:

The BJP is getting most positive sentiments in 8 states: WB, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh.

The party is getting least negative sentiments in 9 states: Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh.

The Aam Aadmi Party is getting most positive sentiments in 4 states: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab, Tamil Nadu. The AAP is getting least negative sentiments in 3 states: WB, Jharkhand, Maharashtra.

The Congress is at a loss, finds the survey. The party is getting most positive sentiments in 2 states: Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand. It s getting least negative sentiments in 3 states: Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab.

The party is getting positive as well as negative sentiments in one state.

Positive sentiments

Here is what Twitteratti thinks of BJP, Congress and AAP

Negative sentiments

Here is what Twitteratti thinks of BJP, Congress and AAP

Congress vs BJP

BJP is getting positive sentiments in 8 states, finds the survey.

Polls start in northeast states

The first phase of voting in general elections started today, April 7, in northeast states

* See the links at the bottom for state wise data.

The above may fail to indicate true popularity, if that political party has got high number of tweets.

In other words, with high number of tweets a political party receiving most positive sentiment may also have received most negative sentiments. So we have considered a different parameter to get popularity of a political party, which is to consider most positive and (at the same time) least negative sentiments. To be specific, it measures if a party gets most positive sentiments with least negative sentiments which indicates true popularity of that party in that state. Using this, we will be able to exclude the effect of more tweets getting more positive sentiments.

It shows that BJP is being mentioned in most positive manner, at the same time, least negative compare to other political parties in 7 states while congress is mentioned in 1. AAP fails to fetch even one state even though it is mentioned in most positive way in 4 states because at the same time its negative rating is high.

Detailed data to support this analysis can be found here. More questions are analyzed here at Twitris India Election 2014 Insight page. Contact Shreyansh Bhatt, the researcher, and Prof. Amit Sheth, the Executive Director of Kno.e.sis, at [email protected] and [email protected] for more in-depth constituency level analysis.

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