Donald J. Trump hit an awesome milestone this week, one he’s been working toward for years, and which he obviously views with great importance and utmost respect: he has passed 20 million followers on Twitter.
Not only has this massive online following been crucial in the president-elect’s rise to power, but Twitter has been his primary instrument for communicating with the world since the election. Earlier this week, Trump promised to unleash his followers on opponents, including fellow Republicans, if they don’t fall in line behind his policy agenda. The more contentious things become in Washington, the more likely we are to hear Trump’s prodigious Twitter following being used as a cudgel against his less follower-endowed opponents, and as an indicator of his broad popularity.
So who are these 20 million? Are they really an online army at his command, a monolithic block of shock troops and #deplorables ready to #MAGA? Analysis by data science platform Affinio, which uses machine learning to identify clusters of common traits and interests within a data set, reveals the picture is quite a bit more complicated.
20 Million? Depends On How You Count
As of Jan. 16 at 1 p.m. ET, there were 19.92 million accounts following @RealDonaldTrump (he passed 20 million shortly thereafter). That's a lot, but remember, any Twitter account of that size accumulates a fair amount of detritus in the form of bots, spam accounts and other zombie followers who don't represent engaged users. In addition, big celebrities on Twitter are often followed by a number of overseas accounts that may or may not be legitimate. In Trump's case, many of those followers come from Moscow or elsewhere in Russia, India, Nigeria and Latin American countries, primarily Venezuela and Mexico. It's not surprising that our PEOTUS is followed by people around the world, but those people should not be counted as part of Trump's electoral base in the U.S.
If you limit the scope of analysis to accounts of users who self-identify as living in the United States, those 20 million total followers worldwide become more like 3 million active domestic Twitter users who included a location setting in their Twitter profile, and thus are likely to represent actual people and businesses. Affinio says they often see large shifts in audience size by applying this kind of geography filter.
What do we know about these followers? Based on an analysis of user profiles, about 52% are male, 48% female, with a plurality falling within the ages of 24-34. An additional 28% or so are 35-44, and 18% are older than 45. Just about 13%, or about 360,000, tweet more than 15 times per month, indicating a high level of engagement. They also fall into 10 distinct categories, some obvious and others less so.
The Tribes Of Trump
Affinio identified 10 major clusters within the domestic, authentic follower base. Though they may seem to describe overlapping groups, each follower is assigned to only one cluster, indicating their primary set of common interests and affiliations based on Twitter use.
- Faith, Family and Football. This all-American cohort represents nearly 20% of the total, the largest cluster of Trump followers. They are 55% male and geographically dispersed across the country. Members identify with terms like “husband,” “family,” “God” and “Christian,” and are significantly more likely to follow college or professional football teams.
- Conservatives. Sixty percent male and significantly older than the sample as whole, these 331,000 followers (13% of the total) overwhelmingly self-describe as “Conservative” and “Christian,” with the terms “husband,” “American,” “family life,” and “retired” also prominent in their bios. This group is 33x more likely to follow Fox News than the rest of Twitter, 355x more likely to follow Breitbart, and 42x more likely to follow Wikileaks. Their favorite celebrities are conservative media figures like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham and Megyn Kelly. Tweeting an average of nearly 20 times per month, this is one of Trump’s most socially engaged constituencies.
- Business Folks. This group, comprising about 12% of the total, gets their info from Forbes, Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Economist, and is more likely to follow Bill Gates or Richard Branson than Jimmy Fallon. Nearly 60% male and predominantly aged 35-44, Trump’s business followers are overwhelmingly based in New York, with other clumps in California, Chicago, Florida and the Dallas area.
- Politicos. About 315,000 of Trump’s online followers, 11% of the total, self-identify primarily with tags like “politics,” “government” and “news.” They do not necessarily follow Trump out of ideological affinity, since their other favorite celebrities include Michele Obama, Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert. In fact, outside of Trump, the political accounts they follow most are Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton and Elizabeth Warren.
- Sports Dads. This overwhelmingly male and family-aged (25-44) segment, 11% of the total, differs slightly from the “Faith, Family and Football” group in that they are much more sports-oriented and relatively less faith oriented. In the last month, they were more interested in the national football championship and the NBA vote than in politics, and were more likely to mention Bleacher Report, ESPN, and Sportscenter in their updates than just about anything else.
- Gamers. Trump’s youngest fanbase, with more than 85% under age 34 (25% under 24), this group identifies heavily with terms like Gaming, ShapChat and YouTube. Their favorite brands are Xbox, Playstation and Rockstar Games. Tweeting nearly 24 times per month on average, they are the most engaged subgroup. Also, 53% female.
- Hollywood and Humor Fans. Based on their media profile, this group of about 220,000 (8%) follows Trump the celebrity, not Trump the politician. Located mostly on the coasts, they are older millennials and younger GenXers whose favorite Twitter accounts besides The Donald are Stephen Colbert, Conan O’Brien, Steve Martin, Sarah Silverman and Seth McFarlane.
- Suburban Moms and NASCAR Moms. These are two similar demographics at 7% and 6% respectively, both representing women in their mid-20s to early 40s, many identifying heavily with their faith. Suburban moms are clustered in the Northeast, with mainstream interests like the Kardashians, Oprah, Ryan Seacrest and Ellen DeGeneres. NASCAR Moms are more likely to be from the Southeast and Texas, following accounts of Nascar drivers, country music stars and media figures like the Duck Dynasty clan.
- Liberal Women. Yep, you read that right. Four percent (approximately 125,000) of Trump’s authentic, domestic followers are in a group made up mostly of women from the coasts who are also big fans of Michelle Obama, Rachel Maddow, Hillary Clinton, NASA, Amnesty International and the U.S. Department of the Interior, and as likely to watch BBC for their news as Fox.
Crunching The Numbers
This mode of analysis is by its nature imperfect, since all of us are more than our Twitter profiles, and even the most intensive data mining can only provide gross metrics. It's possible that some of the domestic Twitter accounts with fewer than 10 followers are legit, which means his numbers might be higher than indicated. And despite some of the counterintuitive audience segments, there are probably plenty of true-believers who fit the hardest-core #altright stereotypes to terrify noncompliant opponents of the soon-to-be-President.
But however you want to count, there are not 20 million actual humans following @realdonaldtrump in the U.S.; there may not even be 6 million. And of those, large subsegments are following him for reasons other than sharing his political views.
I expect we’ll hear a lot about the 20 million as the debate unfolds in coming weeks and the new POTUS tries to bully and cudgel our political system into doing his bidding. Just keep in mind that on Twitter, as with everything to do with Trump, size matters, and nothing is as it first appears.
