REGINA – It only allows for 140 characters, but it hasn’t stopped Saskatchewan politicians from getting their message out.
Twitter Canada has been tracking tweets about the provincial election using the hashtag #skpoli and #skvotes.
In the past 30 days, over 100,000 tweets have been sent.
Twitter Canada’s News and Government Partnership Steve Ladurantaye said leaders tweeting back is something that’s rare in other elections.
“In the federal election, you saw leaders who would tweet but they wouldn’t necessarily get involved in conversation with other users so that’s something that I’ve been watching that’s fairly unique in this election”.
“You’ve seen a lot of one-on-one conversations with voters on Twitter where they’re getting their messages out directly”, Ladurantaye explained.
FULL COVERAGE: Decision Saskatchewan 2016
On Twitter, the Saskatchewan Party rule, specifically Brad Wall.
He’s the fifth most followed premier, with over 56k followers.
“We’ve used it quite effectively, it’s a good medium to get your message out”, Saskatchewan Party leader Brad Wall said.
According to Twitter Canada, in the past 30 days, Brad Wall had 24,000 more mentions than NDP’s Cam Broten. That’s four times more interaction.
During that time, he’s also gained seven times more followers than Broten.
The March 23rd debate was by far the date with the most mentions for both Wall and Broten.
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For the NDP, it was a rocky start to the campaign, as they fired four candidates over social media posts within three days.
“Sask families don’t want this to descend into attacks on years old social media posts”, Broten explained on March 12.
Twitter Canada says the top term that has appeared in Tweets mentioning #skvotes or #skpoli in the past 30 days is Healthcare.
It’s followed by Education, the Economy, Privatization and Energy.
Ladurantaye said it takes more than just Twitter to win votes, but it’s also engagement that shouldn’t be overlooked.
“You saw it with Justin Trudeau, where all throughout the campaign people were saying to me he’s doing really great on Twitter, but that’s not the real world”.
He advised candidates to engage with tweeters via replies and mentions, and build that one on one connection.