Every year millions of Americans gather around to listen to the President’s State of the Union speech, and the opposition response that directly follows it. The State of the Union is a catalyst that ignites a national conversation online about the issues facing America today. The 2013 #SOTU address and response drew over 1.36 million tweets from the time of the President’s entrance to the conclusion of the Republican rebuttal (9:10 pm to 10:44 pm).
The State of the Union on Twitter
The highest spikes of tweets occurred when Obama discussed the following issues (in tweets per minute):
– Middle class opportunities & minimum wage; “ladders of opportunity”: 24,000 TPM
– Gun violence victims and need for legislation; “they deserve a vote”: 23,700 TPM
– Early childhood education; “make sure none of our children start the race of life already behind…Let’s give our kids that chance”: 19,000 TPM
During the GOP response, the highest frequency of tweets came following Florida Senator Marco Rubio pausing for a sip of water. Of which Senator Rubio made light of in this funny tweet:
#GOPResponse #SOTU #gop #tcot twitter.com/marcorubio/sta…
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 13, 2013
Microsoft Bing Poll – Real-time Reactions to the 2013 State of the Union Address
Microsoft’s Bing conducted the largest online poll in history showing the real-time reactions to the President’s speech from millions of American’s split along gender and party lines. The Bing Beat data analyzed keywords of various social media posts to determine the overall sentiment of trending topics at the conclusion of Obama’s speech.
The topics viewed most favorably by Americans included education and Afghanistan, while the topics with the greatest negative sentiment were immigration, unemployment, gun control and health care.
Regardless of your political affiliations though, the ultimate conclusion from the reaction of the 2013 State of the Union is that American’s care deeply about their politics and country. So maybe it’s time to finally put bipartisan issues aside and try and work together to improve our great country!
51 years ago John F. Kennedy declared to this chamber that the constitution makes us not rivals for power but partners for progress.” – Barack Obama
What were your thoughts on the 2013 State of the Union address?
