NEWS FOCUS: Who will be the next mayor of the capital? Speculation and polls on possible candidates. Impact online
The topic of the elections for the Capital's City Hall is gradually, but more and more firmly, entering the media agenda, after the announcement of the candidates' intentions, speculations on the names that could enter the final competition and the appearance of the first opinion polls, which begin to outline the picture of the future electoral competition. According to data extracted and analyzed with the help of NewsVibe - an AI platform for automated and multilingual media monitoring -, in the last month there have been over 1,500 mentions in the most relevant online sources, which have generated an estimated number of almost 55 million views, about the top five names in the top five of the voting intention for the Mayor of the Capital, in the most recent INSCOP poll (scenario 1).
The most important spikes in mentions in online sources over the last month were driven by Cătălin Drulă and Ciprian Ciucu.
Grafic NewsVibe. The evolution in the number of mentions of names being bandied about as PMB candidates and their total impact over the last month
Top keywords mentioned
The most frequent terms associated with the top five names in the top of voting intention for the Mayor of Bucharest (according to INSCOP data) are Nicușor Dan, PNL, USR and, to a lesser extent, Ilie Bolojan, Bucharest or Mayoralty of Bucharest.
This distribution shows that a significant part of the online conversation about the upcoming elections in Bucharest focused on the possible PNL-USR discussion for the designation of a joint candidate, on the image competition between Cătălin Drulă and Ciprian Ciucu, seen as representative options for the two parties, but also on the ability of President Nicușor Dan to symbolically influence the race in the capital, through the signals he sends.
The name Anca Alexandrescu also generated a high volume of mentions, but these are linked not only to the race for the Capital, but also to her journalistic interventions.
On the whole, there is a prevalence of associations with the USR and PNL areas in terms of perceptions about the upcoming elections in Bucharest.
Grafic NewsVibe. Top entities mentioned in the context of mentions of names floated as PMB candidates in the last month
Harta of semantic associations
By means of semantic network analysis, through which NewsVibe maps the structure and connections within an online conversation, we can analyze an overview of the topics debated in the digital environment regarding the five names of possible candidates for the Mayor's Office of the Capital, in the period under analysis. We can thus see that the discussions during these weeks were organized in three distinct nuclei:
- Nicusor Dan, USR, Cătălin Drulă - Cătălin Drulă announced his intention to run, USR supports his candidacy, and President Nicușor Dan met with him and claimed that he has the profile to be mayor of the capital.
- Ciprian Ciucu, PNL, Ilie Bolojan, PSD, Daniel Băluță - the PNL president has promoted Ciprian Ciucu as a possible candidate for Bucharest, Ciprian Ciucu is constantly being talked about as a possible candidate supported by PNL or by PNL and USR (if the two parties agree); PSD is also present in this nucleus, both through the name Daniel Băluță as a possible candidate, and through the social-democrats' signals to PNL about the organization of elections or the need to support a common candidate of the whole coalition.
- Anca Alexandrescu, Romania - a distinct nucleus, quite closely linked to the area of sovereignist parties and leaders from this political spectrum.
Grafic NewsVibe. Semantic semantic network of online conversation about names floated as PMB candidates in the last month
*****Synthesis made using a data feed provided by the media monitoring platform NewsVibe Romania. The analysis, data and images presented have been enhanced using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence tools.
