#mathishard — 8,956 mentions

In the leaders’ debate, Jim Prentice noted that “math is difficult” during an exchange with Rachel Notley about a planned corporate tax hike. Surprising no one, that didn’t go over very well.

It's Notley vs. Prentice but Prentice is already out #abvote #mathishard — James Pauls (@James_Pauls) April 24, 2015

#lifewithndp — 8,667 mentions

Life with NDP started as a way to encourage Manitobans and Saskatchewanians to share their NDP horror stories.

Manitobans & Saskatchewanians, maybe share some of your worst #LifewithNDP stories with the Albertans you know. I bet you have some doozies — Sheila Gunn Reid 🐀 (@SheilaGunnReid) April 25, 2015

#pcaahostagecrisis — 4,521 mentions

This was born after five Alberta CEOs held a press conference to warn people that there wouldn’t be any money for corporate donations to frills such as children’s hospitals if Albertans elected a NDP government.

#dirkshistory — 3,135 mentions

After Gordon Dirks claimed to be the main supporter of GSAs in Alberta, many tweeters rewrote other pieces of history to credit Dirks, including the invention of the light bulb.

Gordon Dirks was a champion of GSAs. He also saw the second shooter on the grassy knoll. #abvote #DirksHistory #ableg — Marty Chan (@Marty_Chan) April 30, 2015

#notleycrue — 2,305 mentions

This quickly became a rallying cry for groups of NDP supporters, and it only took 44 minutes for someone to request a t-shirt (that could be purchased here but they have since moved onto other designs).

The #abndp have a great slate of candidates this time around. I know that I’m supporting the #NötleyCrüe #ABLeg pic.twitter.com/oV8eXg7yRh — Olav Rokne (@OlavRokne) April 9, 2015

#prenticeblamesalbertans — 1,791 mentions

Prentice played the blame game for Alberta’s budget woes, and many tweets followed detailing other things he could blame Albertans for — like Nickleback.

"Look in the mirror", Prentice tells everyone but Prentice. #PrenticeBlamesAlbertans pic.twitter.com/TU19Xx6gi5 — Sally Poulsen (@SallyPoulsen) March 5, 2015

#buddyyouarebeingsetup — 1,748 mentions

Jamie Lall was disqualified for running for the PC party (probably good, in retrospect). Why? No one was saying. But according to former Justice Minster Jonathan Denis, “Buddy, you are being set up.”

#hopemongering — 1,628 mentions

Hope-mongering was started as a reaction to Paula Simons’ long string of tweets about the Edmonton Journal’s endorsement of the PC party.

Not Just the Pundits

One of the criticisms laid against social media, especially in election campaigns, is that it’s just the pundits and media talking to each other and doesn’t reflect the views of “regular” people. In this campaign, it certainly started out that way — for the first two weeks of the campaign, less than 9,000 unique authors were discussing the hashtag. But then it exploded.

In the last weeks of the campaign, the number of unique authors grew to 15,000, then 21,000 and finally to 56,000 unique authors. Yes, that is still a very small subset of the approximately 2.5 million eligible voters — just 2.2%. But keeping in mind that we can only track public mentions, not private Facebook discussions, text messages, and other digital discussions — it’s a sign that Albertans were engaged.

Which begs the question: will TV, radio, and newspaper ads always be a huge expense in electoral campaigns? Or will parties take their ad dollars online, to where their constituents are truly engaged? The NDP had the strongest digital game of all the parties in this election — they didn’t raise as much money as the PCs or Wild Rose, so every dollar had to go that much further.

Hope vs. Fear

The election’s narrative ended up as a choice — hope, with the NDP, or fear that any government other than the PCs would ruin Alberta. Many NDP supporters recalled Jack Layton’s famous last letter, where he stated that “…love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.” Since then, it’s been a rallying cry for NDP supporters.

Sentiment analysis looks at the words used and assigns an emotional “score”. Machines can’t (yet) detect sarcasm, or slang — so saying that someone “crushed it” or “that’s nice” would probably turn up the wrong sentiment. But by and large, sentiment analysis gives a good temperature of the conversations.

Here are the top 10 positive and negative terms shared in #abvote: