Rational 360 Blog Rational Insights: State of the Union 2019

Last night, President Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union address to the nation. Rational 360 analyzed 3.4 million posts and news articles around the speech, examining the topics that resonated online. Specifically, R360 analyzed five key issue areas: health care, immigration, tech and privacy, foreign affairs, and the economy. The insights below highlight some key takeaways:15 percent of overall SOTU posts mentioned one of our five key policy areas.Half of the analyzed policy posts in the five areas were about immigration. The topic of immigration made up 50 percent of all posts within those issues. Overall, across the entire State of the Union conversation, immigration made up eight percent of posts. Online conversation in early 2020 primary states was three percentage points higher than the national baseline sentiment. Online sentiment in 2020 early primary states was 21 percent positive while the overall sentiment was 18 percent positive. Sentiment is measured through a machine-learning algorithm trained to identify posts that use positive and negative language.Though privacy and tech giants like Facebook were posted about frequently in a policy context in early 2018, tech did not play a part in the State of the Union. President Trump did not mention privacy or tech during the address and the conversation online generated less than 1 percent of posts pertaining to those issues. Outside of major policy areas, "Stacey Abrams" and "lying" were the top mentioned topics. Stacey Abrams was posted about over 300,000 times and lying 200,000 times. The top shared articles about the State of the Union were from national outlets and smaller conservative outlets. The top shared outlets were CNN and The Washington Post. Smaller conservatitive outlets included The Gateway Pundit and Breitbart. Rational 360 defined red states and blue states by the results of the 2016 Presidential election.