(Ferenstein Wire) — Twitter still hasn’t solved its liberal bias problem; during a Republican presidential debate Thursday night, a self-declared European-style socialist scored the most popular tweet of any candidate. Democrat Bernie Sanders snagged a whopping 29,000 retweets (and counting) for slamming Republicans for “not one word about economic inequality, climate change, Citizens United or student debt.”
Twitter’s glaring bias is problematic for both democracy and the company’s own bottom line. As journalists rush to gage public sentiment during the race for president, conservative voices will be overwhelmed. As a business, Twitter has struggled to grow its user base to the wider U.S. population (23 percent of Americans use Twitter as of September 2014).
How do we know that Twitter is really biased? Well, According to Google search volume, Ben Carson vastly outperformed Bernie Sanders Thursday night and continued the trend into the morning. Friday morning, Carson continues to lose to Bernie Sanders in Twitter mentions.
It’s important to keep this in mind when America eventually sees a Republican vs. Democrat on a debate stage and turns to Twitter. The Democrat will likely win the micro-blogging vote, even if he or she loses popular opinion.
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