If you only have a few seconds, read these lines:

• At the global level, the peak of activity was registered when Mauricio Macri spoke from the Juntos por el Cambio bunker.
• Tweets by Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and a fake account of José Mujica were among the most retweeded.
• Sebastián Piñera’s congratulations to Alberto Fernández was the tweet with the most replies.

According to data obtained from Trendsmap, between 8 a.m. on Sunday, October 27 and 8 a.m. on Tuesday, October 29, there were 507,400 tweetes related to the presidential elections around the world, not considering the interactions inside Argentina.  In the period analyzed, the highest number of messages posted per minute was 870. The analysis included keywords in Spanish related to the elections, as well as the candidates’ accounts and names, which means messages in other languages are not part of the analysis.

The countries in the graph commented on Twitter about the Argentinian elections last Sunday. The darker the color, the bigger the conversation. The heat map helps to detect with the naked eye the place originating the most tweets. To do this, Trendsmap combines geolocation with other information such as biographic data or linguistic references.

Among the messages from other countries, 19% were published in Brazil, followed by Venezuela (15%) and the United States (9%).

Tweets about the Argentinian presidential election in other countries

The data refers to the activity on Twitter between 8 a.m. on Sunday, October 27, 2019 and 8 a.m. on Tuesday, October 29, 2019.

Source: Elaborated by Chequeado from a keyword search and from the accounts of the presidential candidates. Argentina was not considered.

In Brazil, which is Argentina’s third most important economic partner, president Jair Bolsonaro demonstrated his opposition on several occasions to the president-elect for the Frente de Todos, Alberto Fernández (see here and here). In addition, he threated last week to suggest the suspension of Argentina from the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) – whose temporary presidency is held by Brazil – if Fernández won.

Regarding Venezula, the mutual criticism between Mauricio Macri and president Nicolás Maduro are well known (see here, here and here). Similarly, the relationship with Venezuela was also one of the most commented topics on Twitter regarding the first presidential debate. In fact, the fourth most retweeted message was posted by the user @marcotuitana, from Venezuela, who talked about the “kirchnerist pillage” and described the electoral result as “incredible”. The message was retweeted 11,116 times and bookmarked 26,565 times.

In addition, one of the most mentioned tweets was the compliment made by the Venezuelan president to Fernández and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner for having “defeated the IMF’s neoliberalism”. When users mention a Twitter post, they can add a comment to the original message, either to agree, criticize or add information. For instance, Fernández mentioned Maduro’s tweet in order to thank him for the compliment, to insist that Latin America works “together in order to overcome poverty and inequality”, and to add that “the full use of democracy is the way to achieve it”.

Tweet: Congratulations to the heroic Argentinian people! In a historic democratic exercise, they have defeated the IMF’s neoliberalism. @alferdez’s and @CFKArgentina’s decisive victory clears an horizon of hope for a better future for Argentina. All the best to Alberto and Cristina!

The highest peak of activity was registered at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, with 11,163 tweets. On that moment, president Macri spoke from inside his bunker, together with Miguel Ángel Pichetto, and recognized the defeat of the Juntos por el Cambio. “More united than ever, we’ll be there to defend the values we believe in”, he emphasized. After that, the interactions on Twitter decreased significantly. The conversation reappeared on Monday in the morning, but did not reach the same levels as before.

Number of tweets published globally about the Argentinian presidential elections

The data refers to the activity on Twitter between 8 a.m. on Sunday, October 27, 2019 and 8 a.m. on Tuesday, October 29, 2019.
The numbers show the amount of Tweets in the world, not considering Argentina, every 5 minutes.
Source: Elaborated by Chequeado from a keyword search and from the accounts of the presidential candidates.

In addition, we detected that the most mentioned word was “macri”, in 30% of the 507,400 tweets. Next, 24% of the tweets contained the word “argentina”; 15% contained “alberto” or “fernández”; and 9% contained “president” or “cristina”.

Like the interactions in Argentina, the most retweeted message was published by the user @rabcoff20, known as “Back”, who defines himself in his Twitter profile as having a “Degree in Kinesiology and Physiatry” and has 438 followers. A publication criticizing the behavior of the electors in general received 42,638 retweets and was bookmarked 134,930 times.

Tweet: They voted for Macri to get Cristina out of there and now vote for Cristina to get Macri out of there, can you see that Argentina does not advance because we are so fucking stupid?

In second place came the tweet made by former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who shared the moment when Fernández asked for his freedom from inside his bunker. The message was retweeted 9,477 times and received 41,648 likes. In third place came a tweet made by a fake account of the former Uruguayan president José Mujica (see Reverso), which reached 18,190 retweets and was bookmarked 64,969 times, with congratulations to Fernández.

Note that Trendsmap also classifies the most retweeted based on other variables such as the number of followers of the account making the tweet.

In the ranking of messages replied the most by users, the congratulations sent by the Chilean president Sebastián Piñera to Fernández came in first place, followed by the congratulations that the president-elect gave Lula for his birthday. This message was replicated both in Argentina and in Brazil with statements both for and against the two protagonists. In third place came Macri’s message after the end of the elections.

Lastly, the French newspaper Le Monde (@lemondefr) was the author of the tweet about the Argentinian presidential elections which exerted the most influence due to their number of followers (almost 8,500,000). That is because of the fact that a note was published last Tuesday indicating which economic policies the Fernández binomial might implement.

Tweet

* The Digital Democracy Room is a project of FGV DAPP in Brazil in partnership with Chequeado, Linterna Verde and Ojo Público. It’s goal is to monitor and analyze the digital conversations regarding the electoral context.

The analysis is available the website of Chequeado here.