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

• The districts that shared the most tweets coincided with those where the Juntos por el Cambio stood out in number of votes, with the exception of the Buenos Aires Province.
• The peak of tweets happened between 10:20 pm.m and 11:20 p.m., the moment when Macri admitted his defeat.
• The most shared publication was posted by @CFK_, a fake account of the former president and now vice-president-elect for the Frente de Todos.

On December 10, Argentina will have a new president. The candidate for the Frente de Todos, Alberto Fernández, surpassed president Mauricio Macri, who was running for reelection with the Juntos por el Cambio, and won in the first round, with 48% of the votes against 40% of the current president. Users on the social networks commented about the elections throughout the day. Here is an analysis of the debate topics on Twitter.

From 8 a.m. on Sunday, when the elections started, until 8 a.m. the following day, more than 3 million tweets (3,388,000) were shared about the elections, of which 73% were retweets. The percentage of retweets was lower than on the presidential debates or the Buenos Aires debate, with more original publications by the users.

The activity on the social networks remained stable until the end of the voting, and started increased as the results were speculated, although the first official numbers were released at 9 p.m. The peak of activity was reached between 10:20 p.m. and 11:20 p.m., when the distance between the leading candidates was consolidated and Macri admitted his defeat.

Number of tweets about the 2019 elections

The data refers to the activity on Twitter between 8 a.m. on Sunday, October 27 and Monday, October 28, 2019.
Source: Elaborated by Chequeado from a keyword search about the elections and from the accounts of the presidential candidates.

Of the shared tweets, 29% were published in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires; 22% in the Buenos Aires Province; 13% in Córdoba; 10% in Santa Fe; and 5% in Mendoza. Those are the five district with the highest population, although not in that order or in that proportion (for example, the City of Buenos Aires has 7.2% of the inhabitants, and is the fourth in terms of population, not the first). There is no released data on the number of Twitter users per province in Argentina. It is important to highlight that Macri surpassed Fernández in number of votes in the other districts mentioned, with the exception of Buenos Aires.

The hashtags indicate one way to frame the discussions on Twitter. The seven hashtags used the most on the day of the elections were: #eleccionesargentina (3.4%), #fraudek (3.0%), #elecciones2019 (1.5%), #sisepuede (1.5%), #yonovotealachorra (1.5%), “#volvimos” (1.5%) and “#albertopresidente” (1.4%). This means that, if we exclude the general hashtags, the top 3 were against the Kirchner administration or supporting the Juntos por el Cambio, while the 2 others were connected to the Frente de Todos.

In addition, 18% of the tweets shared included a mention to “Macri”; 12% referred to the election day with the word “votar”; 10% contained the word “todos”; 7% contained “Cristina”; and 6% contained “Alberto”. These mentions to the candidates can be either for or against them.

The most shared tweets was posted by a fake account of former president and vice-president-elect Cristina Fernández de Kirchne (@CFK_), and insults the Frente de Todos electors for supporting a formula led by Alberto Fernández “despite everything we did”. The account has been active since 2011 and has 50.8thousand followers.

Tweet: I cannot believe that, despite everything we did during these 12 years, you are still electing us. You are more stupid than I thought. #EleccionesArgentina

The second most retweeted tweet contained insults and references to the two main candidates, stating that “Argentina does not move forward”. It was published by the user “Back” (@rabcoff20), who, despite having only 331 followers, reached 34.3 thousand retweets and 103 thousand likes in his tweet. The profile has been active since 2018 and is described as a kinesiologist and physiatrist. The publication was mentioned by accounts with thousands of followers, such as that of the former participant of the entertainment program Combate, Ramiro Nayar (492.2 thousand followers), and reached users from other countries who commented about the results in Argetina, such as Ecuador’s Christian social leader Diego Salgado.

Circulation of the second most shared tweet on the election day

The third most retweeted message included a video and denounced the fraud in a school in Ezpeleta. It was published by “Diego Álzaga Unzué” (@atlanticsurff), a profile that has been active since 2010 and has 133.1 thousand followers. The user has intense activity in favor of Juntos por el Cambio, and even spread content that Reverso, the association of communication vehicles against disinformation led by Chequeado, demonstrated to be false. His tweet was shared 22.1 thousand times and got 30.4 thousand likes.

None of the candidates was among the most retweeted users. However, the official account of Alberto Fernández (@alferdez) was one of the most mentioned; and the official account of Mauricio Macri (@mauriciomacri) was among the most replied to.

Lastly, the three most active accounts (in terms of mentions, replies and retweets) were close to Juntos por el Cambio. The first of them was “El Anti Opereta” (@ChauOperetaK), a user since 2018 and with 20.3 thousand followers whose account is currently suspended, followed by the director and screenwriter Juan José Campanella (@juancampanella), who has 803.3 thousand followers. In third place came Ulises Chaparro (@VivirporBoca), who has been active since 2013 and has 14.3 thousand followers; among other things, he demonstrated to be offended by the result of María Eugenia Vidal because “she gave her life for this shit province full of negroes, thieves, corrupt politicians and mobsters”, which has almost 8 thousand retweets.

* 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.