It is still WAAAAY to early to begin the full Technology Outreach Scorecards for the 2016 elections but I thought I would provide some information about the Maryland’s 8th Congressional District by looking at the current number of Twitter followers for the various candidates.

Now keep in mind the real value of these numbers is the ongoing growth and overall engagement on this (Twitter) and the other social media platforms for each candidate. This chart is just a starting point for each candidate for you to use as a reference today.

Click the “Official Campaign Twitter Account” links to view the social media page

Candidate	Twitter Followers	Official Campaign Twitter Account
Valerie Ervin	3099	@ValerieErvin
Kumar Barve	2603	@KumarBarve
Jamie Raskin	2145	@jamie_raskin
Ana Sol-Gutierrez	1695	@asolg
William Jawando	920	@wjawando
Kathleen Matthews	133	@ElectKathleen

Notes – All of the candidates listed above are Democrats. I don’t know of any Republicans that have officially announced as of today.

Positives – All of the candidates appear to be pretty active on Twitter. I look forward to following all of the accounts to see if this trend continues.

Concerns – I have two concerns about the current accounts:

1. Ana Sol-Gutierrez – Her account description has not been updated as of today. Description reads “Maryland State Delegate District 18, Montgomery County, MD”. Would be better if it had something about her running for Congress in the description of the account.

2. Jamie Raskin – I am never a fan of Twitter accounts using underscores in the name. It is a pretty easy fix and there are a number of good options available to him to make the account name better. It is always a good idea to have the same account name on Facebook and Twitter if at all possible.

Again, Keep in mind this is a very early look and I would recommend using this information as reference only right now. Know there will be updates in the future that will detail the number of new followers obtained and the amount of engagement for each account. I will also put out Facebook followers review in the future as well as full scorecards later in the year.

Here is another good resource for information from Ballotpedia:  http://ballotpedia.org/Maryland’s_8th_Congressional_District_election,_2016

Good luck to all of the candidates. If any are looking for Social Media advice, I am available for consulting assistance:  http://scottesoftware.com/our-services/social-media-consulting/

Scott E

#MDPolitics