Spheres of Hillfluence: Democrats find their voice amid tariffs in Q1
Welcome to Penta's "Spheres of Hillfluence" report, a quarterly summation of who is influencing policymakers in Washington D.C., which topics are receiving the most attention, as well as an analysis on partisan divides as it relates to social media. Below is an analysis of Twitter/X data from the official and personal accounts of all Members of Congress from Q1 2025.
The Takeaways
Democrats finding their voice
Democrats are unifying under key issues and making a conscious effort to amplify their message after a post-election lull. Democrat congresspeople tweeted 17% more in Q1 2025 compared to Q4 2024, and drove an 128% increase of tweets about key issues such as tariffs and healthcare. For Republicans, those legislators tweeted 10% more over the same period with a 20% increase on key issue coverage.
Influential Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett found success in messaging that emphasized tariffs' direct impact to Americans such as the potential for rising prices on goods and medication.
Tariffs conversation accelerates at a blistering pace
Sensing opportunity to capitalize on negative sentiment around tariffs, Democrats in Congress tweeted about the issue 1,654 times compared to 600 by Republicans in Q1. Overall, Democrats tweeted about tariffs 519% more in Q1 than Q4 with Republicans doing so 203% more.
Penta analysis shows that the key themes for Democrats around tariffs include: a negative impact on American families, a threat to global economic stability, hurting American manufacturing and the housing market. For Republicans, their messaging around tariffs includes: tariffs as a tool to reduce trade imbalance, tariffs as a means of putting Americans first, as well as tariffs being leveraged to combat fentanyl from coming into the U.S.
A month-to-month breakdown of each party's mentions of tariffs is below:
Who Influences Congress?
Please note that the "influencer score" referenced below as "Score," examines the Twitter/X activity of relevant stakeholders to identify and map key individuals who influence a target group. This score is a composite metric that measures engagement with a target account's posts, factoring in original mentions, reposts, quote posts, and replies.
Focusing in...
- GOP policymakers are looking more to individuals (four of the top five above), while more traditional media institutions have the ears of Democrat lawmakers.
Which issues are top-of-mind?
| Issue | Number of GOP Tweets | Change over time | Number of Dem. Tweets | Change over time | Partisan difference |
| Immigration | 5,094 | +2% | 1,332 | +87% | GOP +3,762 |
| Healthcare | 1,472 | +48% | 4,612 | +121% | Dem. +3,140 |
| Crypto | 333 | +127% | 93 | -59% | GOP +240 |
| Tariffs | 600 | +203% | 1,654 | +519% | Dem. +1,054 |
| AI | 219 | +81% | 78 | -24% | GOP +141 |
Focusing in...
- Each party is showing which issues are a point of emphasis, with Republicans tweeting about immigration 3,762 more times than Democrats, and Democrats tweeting about healthcare 3,140 more times than Republicans in Q1. Immigration and healthcare have now remained the top issues for Republicans and Democrats, respectively, for both Q4 2024 and Q1 2025.
- Democrats were much more active in Q1 2025 than Q4 2024, increasing their frequency of every key issue above except AI and crypto.