Of the roughly 43,000 times Toronto’s mayor was mentioned on various social media sites since he took office last December, fewer than 3,000 posts had a positive tone. The remainder split evenly between negative and neutral.
According to research by locally based Social Media Group, Ford’s popularity among plugged-in Torontonians hit new lows this summer — 61 per cent negative — around the time the Fords picked a fight with beloved author (and Canadian Twitter royalty) Margaret Atwood.
In fact, the mayor’s online approval had been steadily sinking the last four months, as service cuts, the Pride snub and the war on graffiti dominated headlines.
Twitter is by far the most popular venue for political venting, with nearly 70 per cent of the posts originating with the popular micro-blogging website. Social Media Group also analyzed message boards, forums, blogs, video and photo sharing sites and Wiki.
These social media patterns aren’t exactly representative, says Ryerson political science professor Neil Thomlinson, but they seem to support what many have been feeling for months: Ford’s honeymoon is over.
Last October, Ford sailed to victory with a landslide 47 per cent of the vote. In April, a poll conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs gave him a 70 per cent approval rating. By June, public support dipped to 57 per cent, according to a poll by Forum Research, still a strong showing for Ford.
“But if that base of support is still holding, their voices are being drowned in social media, where Ford detractors consistently share the outrage and scorn for Toronto’s top civic leader,” said Patrick Gladney, Social Media Group’s director of research and insights.
The company looked at the 10-month period following Ford’s inauguration. Of the 42,591 posts identified, researches read through a “statistically significant sample” — about 100 each month — and classified the comments as positive, negative or neutral.
In December, the sentiment was split evenly: 47 per cent of the digitized population was neutral and negative, with only 6 per cent of comments being positive. On the heels of a surprise property tax freeze and promises to build new subway routes, January was a good month for the mayor.
His negative numbers dropped to 37 per cent and his positives hit 12 per cent. But from then on, more or less, the landscape has been worsening.
One notable blip was a spike of positive comments — 13 per cent, his highest — in June, the month Ford failed to attend a single Gay Pride event. But the backlash from that controversy unquestionably hurt him among the broader population, said Thomlinson.
“My sense, which is completely not scientific, is that the Margaret Atwood dustup and Pride really hurt him. I’m basing this anecdotally. People I know who voted for him were just horrified,” he said.
Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, said that while he too believes the public is souring on Ford, the biggest revelation in the research was that social media skews left.
Wiseman recalls looking at the candidate websites during the campaign.
“Ford’s was poorly designed compared to Smitherman’s, Pantalone’s and Rossi’s. And I thought: yeah this guy doesn’t need slick online adds to win. It goes against his constituency,” said Wiseman.
Those constituents, said Gladney, are older, less likely to hold a post-secondary education and less likely to be on social media.
But for all the Ford haters out there who think this is good news, Wiseman has a warning.
“In many respects it doesn’t matter. It’s very hard to defeat incumbents. At the time of the next election (if his approval is low) the more people feel he is unpopular the more people will feel they have a chance to win and run,” he said. “This will split the vote. What will happen is he could get re-elected next time with 30 per cent. But at the rate he’s going, he might implode before then.”
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Source: Toronto Star
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