The post below was originally posted on November 17, 2019 and includes data from that time. SMI trends have mostly signaled deteriorating conditions for implied impeachment support which makes the conclusions herein more secure.
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Summary
Trends in Social Media Influence (SMI) show that the current impeachment scenario does not appear positive for Democrats. Trump, his political allies, and pro-Trump media have either maintained attractive SMI levels or they have surged higher since impeachment speculation began over issues related to Ukraine. In contrast, Democrats, their allies, and anti-Trump Republicans have generally performed under expectations.
As interpreted through SMI trends, the impeachment does not appear to have a broad base of support. Further, there is a good chance that the attempt at impeachment could backfire on Democrats as it has solidified a new generation of ‘Trumpian’ Republican leaders.
What is a ‘Successful Impeachment’
We do not refer to a successful impeachment as a mere political vote. A truly successful impeachment of Trump, from a Democratic perspective, would include turning his base against him and having the Republican Party revert to something more akin to its 2014 landscape. If an impeachment vote, even if they obtain the minimum number of votes to impeach the president, is not able to weaken Trump sufficiently to get him out of office (either through a removal or in the 2020 election) an impeachment would not be viewed as successful.
Current Consensus vs. ZettaCap’s Forecast
Our forecast goes against the prevailing consensus. Based on predictit.org, the prediction (or betting) market, there is a 76% chance Trump will be impeached in his first term. In August and September, this figure hovered in the 20s. In other words, the consensus believes impeachment is imminent and the chance of it occurring has greatly increased.
Furthermore, consensus as based on national polls and betting markets believes that Democrats will win the 2020 election.
In short, the consensus sees impeachment going through and a Democrat winning in 2020.
ZettaCap forecasts an unsuccessful impeachment outcome (such as an impeachment that will backfire on Democrats) and a Trump victory in 2020.
Social Media Influence (SMI)
SMI is a proprietary tool developed by ZettaCap to measure the degree of influence on social media. It has successfully forecasted well out-of-consensus political outcomes far in advance of election-day.
Some of SMI’s highlights include it producing the first quantitative forecast for Trump (US), Macron (France), and Bolsonaro (Brazil) victories. Each eventually won their elections after an initial period of disbelief from pundits and analysts.
SMI Groups
One interesting advantage of SMI over other forms of analysis is that we can group the data in a variety of ways. Polls and betting markets are fairly static in this regard.
For our analysis here, we have grouped SMIs of the most influential individuals / organizations in the political landscape into thematic groups. Doing so allows us to compare the influence, as well as trends, of same.
The thematic groups analyzed here include:
What we would expect to see for a Successful Impeachment
Creating groups or cohorts allows us to look at scenarios. For certain topics, such as impeachment (or any that is apparently binary or one in which specific sides are taken), comparing SMI of groups is very useful.
In the case that impeachment were to be successful, we would expect most or even all of the following to occur in SMI trends:
NONE has occurred, except for the last one.
Democrats who are pushing the impeachment forward have in fact gained significantly in terms of SMI. In many ways, they have become extremely influential and are setting the tone for the current news cycle. However, one out of ten expected signals is an extremely poor showing which implies there is little actual support for impeachment.
What we see does NOT imply a Successful Impeachment
In many ways, SMI trends forecast the opposite of a successful impeachment — in fact, SMI trends infer a potential backfire, meaning impeachment proceedings will likely end up being a net negative for Democrats and net positive for pro-Trump Republicans.
Using the previous numerical outline as a base, SMI trends currently show:
Basically, other than surges for the likes of Pelosi and Schiff, we see extremely little quantitative evidence of there being a major political shift happening that will benefit Democrats.
In contrast, we see major surges for a variety pro-Trump Republicans and commentators.
A potential outcome of the impeachment attempt, based on SMI trends, is the strengthening and solidifying of the pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party, and not the destruction of it as many impeachment supporters tend to assume.