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infegy OP t1_j50nbmf wrote

Data:
Social Media data sourced from Infegy, a consumer intelligence platform that collects, analyzes, and visualizes billions of social media posts.
Polling average from FiveThirtyEight’s summary of Joe Biden’s approval rating, available here: FiveThirtyEight- How Popular/Unpopular is Joe Biden?

Explanation:

This visualization tracks the aggregate average of online sentiment for posts across the internet discussing Joe Biden from January 1, 2021 through the present (n=74,409,409 individual posts). I compared that with the moving average from FiveThirtyEight’s How Popular/Unpopular is Joe Biden?
The original idea for this graph came from a Politico article that said that after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, Joe Biden’s popularity began to slip (Politico - Biden's Afghanistan Withdrawal Anniversary).
Interestingly, it looks like aggregate sentiment data form social media bears that out to some degree. Biden’s sentiment online drops as the Taliban began their advance. That drop in sentiment is matched with a drop FiveThirtyEight’s polling.
Overall though, it appears that social media data is more reactive, but less durable than traditional polling. Negative/Positive stories break in the news, which causes sentiment to go up or down.

Tools:
Python (Pandas and Matplotlib)

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