Twitter trends find D.C. insiders care more about Hillary Clinton, less about Freddie Gray than the rest of us

(Image credit: Sean Gardner/Getty Images)

published 12 June 2015

An analysis of what trends on Twitter in and outside of the Beltway shows that political insiders are paying attention to a pretty different set of news stories than the rest of America.

For instance, while most of the country was fascinated by "The Dress," political tweeters were focused on CPAC, the conservative movement's largest annual conference. A graver difference shows up in D.C.'s comparative disinterest in the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore Police: While this was one of the largest trends among non-political tweeters, in D.C. it made a much smaller impact.

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Another interesting takeaway can be found in the capital city's disproportionate preoccupation with the 2016 election. As social media analyst Patrick Ruffini comments, "If you want a clue as to why early 2016 polling is so volatile, it's because people outside the Beltway really aren't paying attention."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.