Measuring Chaffetz’s Legacy on Twitter
Utah Republican has been one of the House’s most active tweeters
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, one of the more prolific tweeters of the House, will need a new Twitter handle soon. The Utah Republican, or @jasoninthehouse as he’s known on the social media platform, submitted his resignation letter to the chamber June 23. He will officially step down Friday. His years in the House, which began in 2009, have closely aligned with Twitter’s rise in the political arena.
Among his compatriots in the freshman class of 2008, Chaffetz has been the most active tweeter. His 7,600 tweets and 276,000 followers are the highest counts among the House members who started their service in the chamber alongside him. His most popular tweets, measured by retweets, have all been about scandals surrounding last year’s presidential candidates, Democrat Hillary Clinton and President Donald Trump.
As Washington says goodbye to Chaffetz (at least in a formal capacity, as Fox News announced Wednesday the congressman would be joining them as a contributor), Roll Call took a look back at his last few thousand tweets, going back to January 2014.
We used Twitter’s API to collect data for this story. View the code for that, plus our analysis, here.