Biden and Trump's 5 Highest-Engagement Election Tweets

Joe Biden became perhaps the most prominent voice in the Twitter chatter around Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate with a bit of trolling about the fly that lingered in Vice President Mike Pence’s hair. The former vice president and current presidential candidate was far from the only one to notice that a fly spent a few minutes squatting on Pence’s white locks during the debate against Biden’s running mate Sen. Kamala Harris. However, Biden’s tweet about the insect, which is still racking up hundreds of thousands of likes and retweets, quickly became his third most popular tweet of the year. https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1314031047013732352 “Pitch in $5 to help this campaign fly,” Biden tweeted, along with a photo of himself holding a fly swatter and a link to his campaign’s donation page. Less than an hour later, a “Truth Over Flies Fly Swatter” was available in the campaign’s online shop. This tweet’s massive success—890,000 likes and rising—raises the question: What gets the most attention for these two presidential candidates on Twitter in a year unlike any other? Adweek took a look at the numbers on Twitter analytics platforms Social Bearing and the Trump Twitter Archive to find out which of Joe Biden and President Donald Trump’s tweets have resonated the most since April when Biden became the de facto Democratic nominee and the run-up to the election began in earnest. The rest of Joe Biden’s 2020 election season tweets by engagement https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1311120831032909825 If teasing his vice presidential successor about his attractiveness to flies is a recipe for success, straightforwardly insulting the president himself performed even better. https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1253751812194070529 It turns out that trolling has long been a reliably high-engagement strategy for the former vice president. Whenever the normally fairly “safe” and reserved Biden adds a little bit of bite to his social messaging, it tends to blow up, and this was certainly the case when he clapped back at Trump’s claim that injecting or consuming cleaning products could cure the coronavirus. https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1307491919384260609 Why think up your own clever tweet when you can just use your opponents words? A 10-second video of Trump saying we’ll never see him again if he loses the election proved to be words of comfort—and humor—for Biden’s voter base. https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1312460408192724992 And of course, if trolling isn’t appropriate for every occasion, how about some good old fashioned motivation? Biden rallied followers on Oct. 3 with a simple message that racked up more than 1 million likes. Trump’s top 2020 election season tweets by engagement For Trump’s tweets, we utilized the Trump Twitter Archive, which aggregates all of the president’s tweets and their performance from his handle @realdonaldtrump. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1311892190680014849 Trump’s top-performing post was the announcement of his and Melania Trump’s Covid-19 diagnoses, which included messages of unity that are not always a feature of the president’s messaging. The diagnosis made such waves three of the president’s five top tweets since April surround it. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1312158400352972800 https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1312233807991496704 https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1267129644228247552 Trump’s campaign strategy, both in 2016 and 2020, has largely hinged on the identification of what he and his voter base believe to be enemies. This tactic has included targeting the amorphous organization Antifa, which has been partially blamed for activity during racial justice protests across the U.S. following the death of George Floyd. The response to this tweet was fueled not only by support for the message, but opposition and news organizations covering the claim. The claim currently has no legs, however. Senate Resolution 279, which calls “for the designation of Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization,” was introduced in July of last year, but it has not been passed. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1266354084036194306 The world has grown accustomed to single-word, all-caps updates from Trump, with this one (sort of) addressing relations with China from May 29, garnering the fourth most likes of any of his tweets since early April. This one specifically addressed Trump’s insistence that Covid-19 originated in China and spread to the U.S. as a result of its negligence. Short, simple and emotionally fueled tweets appear to not only resonate with his voter base, but also to generate buzz from those who disagree with him and the news organizations that speculate about the implications of this messaging. Read Next: How President Trump’s Covid-19 Diagnosis Will Shape Campaign Messaging as Election Day Nears

Mediaweek

5 Tweets From the 2020 Presidential Candidates That Drove the Most Engagement

Trump and Biden's Twitter activity tells us what messaging people respond to the most

Jess Zafarris

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Jess Zafarris