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2018 was a year of conversation, controversy and change in Canadian politics.
For the fourth year in the row, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) was the most-mentioned Canadian politician on Twitter. In June 2018, Trudeau also became the first Canadian politician to reach the 4 million follower mark.
#cdnpoli was the second most-mentioned Canadian hashtag on Twitter in 2018 (behind only #BellLetsTalk) and was central to Canada’s political conversation on the platform.
Here are the three dates in 2018 that generated the most single-day mentions of #cdnpoli on Twitter:
Conversations about the leaders of the two largest parties often included other political luminaries. Trudeau was often tagged with U.S. President Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump), especially during the 2018 G7 Summit (#G7) in Charlevoix, Quebec.
Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer (@AndrewScheer) continues to be mentioned alongside Bernier or former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (@StephenHarper).
Key Topic and Trends
Some of the biggest political #cdnpoli conversations on Twitter in 2018 included:
Conversations on Twitter werealso a unique predictor of Canadian political activity in 2018. A good example of this was the November 13th plebiscite in Calgary over a potential 2026 Winter Olympics bid (#Calgary2026).
The bid had received a lot of mainstream media support and attention but conversation on Twitter told another story. Between November 1-12, there were more than twice as many Tweets using the #NoCalgary2026 hashtag compared to the #YesCalgary2026 hashtag, foreshadowing the eventual voting down of the potential bid by Calgary residents.
Key Politicians and Personalities
These were the sitting politicians with the most Twitter mentions in 2018:
With many elections across the nation, 2018 was also a year of transition. We saw five new premiers assume office, as well as municipal and mayoral races featuring some of Canada’s most-followed politicians, resulting in political drama at home and beyond.
If you extended this ranking to all Canadian politicians who held office in 2018, a Top 20 most-mentioned list would also include former Quebec premier Philippe Couillard (@phcouillard) and former Toronto city councillor Norm Kelly (@norm).
Here are three other insights that helped shape the story of Canadian politics on Twitter in 2018:
NOTE: All data insights contained in this blog are based on Twitter data collected between January 1, 2018 and November 30, 2018.