The power of social media to collapse sentiment and move the voter dial among a decisive constituency became painfully evident this past Tuesday night at the debate with Mitt Romney's blundering remark "binders full of women." During the debate it became sorely clear that, even today, Presidential candidates, use sexist language, which in Romney's case reduced women to a mail order commodity-a sentiment not lost in social translation.
How has social media moved the meter since the debate? President Obama's net sentiment has gained 17% while Romney's net sentiment shows an 11% decline. And with the President's gain and the social controversy over the "binder" remark, Romney's passion intensity score has soared 33 points to Obama's 12.
Predictably, Romney's "binders of women" remark fast turned meme and became instant fodder for social female voters. As offensive as that remark was considered, the words he used to describe his support of "equal opportunity" have given rise to scrutiny of his record in the advancement of women- both as Governor of Massachusetts and CEO at Bain. As Soroya Chemaly's blog at Huffington Post analyzes, there are "many reasons why this meme is legitimate and not just a silly Internet trope."
As noted in my last blog on the eve of the debate, a recently-released Gallup/USA Today poll reported a shift in favor of Romney by likely women voters in key swing states-bringing the gender gap between the Presidential candidates to a virtual dead heat (also reflected in my last NetBase social gender snapshot). Among the issues chatter we've been tracking this week alone- and second only to the economy and jobs- the most significant concerns women.
While we're unable to predict how Romney's "binders of women" comment will play out ultimately at the ballot box, his verbal missteps during the debate already are wreaking havoc on his social sentiment among one of the most decisive demographics in the 2012 election-women voters-arguably reversing the gains he made among likely women voters that was reported last week. Within one day of the second debate, Romney's previous sentiment gains among women were wiped out 15%, resulting in net 0%, while Obama gained 17% the same day for a net 16%.
When filtered for "full of women," Romney's topics cloud in NetBase tells a story of its own.
While Romney may have self-imploded his support by women, owing to a "nonsensical platitude" or "fatal error" during the second debate, his social indiscretion may have spurred undecided voters-both women and men-to revisit his actual record on equal pay. For all the grandstanding about his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts, Romney's record shows, as reported by Chemely, that during his term the number of women appointed to senior positions in that state declined regardless of his record of hiring women. Further, throughout his CEO tenure at Bain, there were no female partners.
So who's in a bind now?