The result of the Junts per Catalunya vote on the future of the Government is still a mystery. Less on Twitter. In this social network the supporters of breaking with Esquerra Republicana are sweeping. EL PAÍS has looked at the attention that the tweets of 20 politicians from the formation have generated since Monday: 10 in favor of breaking up and 10 in favor of maintaining the coalition.
The result is overwhelming. This newspaper has ordered the tweets that have received the most attention by number of likes. Between the 20 leaders they have written more than 300 original tweets from Monday to Wednesday at noon. The first of a supporter of remaining in the Government is around position 50. That is, there are dozens of messages before that have more support from leaders who oppose it.
Although not all the tweets are strictly about voting, the attention generated by the messages of supporters of the rupture such as Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas, Laura Borràs, Jami Matamala or Aleix Sarri is an order of magnitude greater than those who prefer to follow. The most prominent tweet from a supporter of maintaining the coalition is from Minister Victòria Alsina: “I ask myself this question: does leaving the @govern bring us closer or further away from independence? It is clear that the ERC is not complying with the agreement, but giving up being in the Government puts the Catalan institutions in the hands of the PSC and closes the Catalan portfolio for many years”. She received 313 likes.
The distance between both positions is so great that the response of the suspended president of the Parliament Laura Borràs to a user who congratulates her on her birthday (460 likes) or the tweet number 17 of a very long thread (338 likes) from the director of the Office Junts MEP, Aleix Sarri, have received more attention than Alsina’s tweet, the most valued by those who want to continue with Esquerra.
The difference in attention received also has an effect on how these 20 accounts are situated in the conversation on Twitter. Two interesting details can be seen in the graph that opens this information: the difference in size between the communities in favor of breaking up —in blue— and staying in favor —in orange— and how the activity of the network itself has separated the politicians in favor of one or the other option.
The 6,465 members of Junts per Catalunya decide this week whether to remain in the Govern de la Generalitat in the midst of a debate between some councilors who prefer to remain in the government and other deputies and party officials who defend breaking the pact that gave the Esquerra Republicana the presidency of the Generalitat in May 2021.
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Twitter is a thermometer of the environment, but it is not a survey at all. In social networks, the silent majorities, if they exist, do not appear. It is entirely possible that the noise of the supporters of breaking up will not translate into a majority of votes later. Although the enthusiasm and desire to share a position is a value in an election: if one side is more motivated, its supporters have more options to end up voting and to encourage others.
Interestingly, a tweet from adviser Joan Maria Piqué, a supporter of maintaining the coalition, about castellers It is the one that has had the most diffusion of the entire database. That anecdotal detail causes that there is at least one supporter of yes in the first places when adding all the retweets and likes received from Monday to Wednesday by these 20 leaders, despite the fact that the tweet does not refer to the struggle. Although Borràs was the one who wrote the most tweets (many were thanking him for his birthday), the leader who had the most diffusion was Sarri, author of a long thread. If we discard Piqué’s tweet about the castlesthe only pro-follow leader who received some support was Alsina.
The difference is so palpable that the supporters of maintaining the coalition do not even have anyone to retweet them: they retweet each other. The accounts that support breakup supporters the most since Monday are varied users such as @merce_noguera, @badalola58 or @s_valls, along with accounts with more unusual names such as @Tarsi46220811 or @JoseMar72168618. (Even if the names suggest a possible bot, they don’t have to: there are often real users who keep those kinds of names that look like license plates and are given automatically by the network). On the other hand, those who prefer to continue with ERC mainly obtain retweets from other leaders who think like them, not from ordinary citizens: among them, from Piqué himself, the mayor of Sant Climent de Llobregat, Isidre Sierra; the spokesperson for Junts in Horta (Barcelona), Arnau Vives, or the deputy Ramon Tremosa.
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