The 25 Best People to Follow on Twitter for Election Night
Politics, comedy, the comedy of politics--these folks cover it all.
Image via Complex Original
The 2012 elections may mark the first year that social media is truly in a position to drive the news cycle. Since 2008, Twitter has come forward to allow people to post reckless self-portraits and express thirst for attention and sex drive the narrative and spread of information in plenty of big news stories, and in politics, they don't get much bigger than electing the President of the United States.
So this November 6, it's a good idea to choose some new Twitter accounts to follow to stay up on everything. Complex wanted to help with the search for new and interesting tweeters, so we compiled (in no particular order) the 25 best people to follow on Twitter for election night, including politicians, pundits, and comedians. They run the gamut from the severely conservative to so far left they almost meet right around the bend, from carefully-crafted funny to sadly unintended comedy.
Regardless of which of these accounts you want to follow, you'll find they all update regularly, are rarely boring, and leave a lasting impression. What kind of impression depends on what you're looking for.
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Written by Steve Huff (@SteveHuff)
Rob Delaney (@robdelaney)
Who: Comedian
Tweeter: Rob Delaney has been called the funniest man on Twitter. A big Irish lug originally from Massachusetts, this stand-up comedian, writer, and actor wears his liberal heart on his sleeve. He's only added to his Twitter legend this election season by relentlessly and hilariously trolling Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
Roseanne Barr (@TheRealRoseanne)
Who: Presidential Candidate
Tweeter: Stand-up comedian and actor Roseanne Barr decided none of the candidates aiming for the highest office in the land were satisfactory. So she became a candidate. Barr still has her funny moments and she has a lot to say about this year's elections—especially when it comes to the question of legalizing it.
Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley)
Who: Senator
Tweeter: Chuck Grassley, the Republican Senator from Iowa, may or may not have a lot to say on Election Night. He's worth a follow for tweets that may read to some like bizarro performance art but are really a result of the Senator's peculiar approach to Internet shorthand. And maybe a slightly shorthanded brain.
Gary Johnson (@GovGaryJohnson)
Who: Libertarian Candidate
Tweeter: Gary Johnson, who served two terms as governor of New Mexico, is a social liberal and fiscal conservative. For something completely different, try following the Twitter feed of this Libertarian candidate for President.
David Frum (@davidfrum)
Who: Writer
Tweeter: David Frum writes for The Daily Beast and is a CNN contributor. A former speechwriter for President George Bush, Frum's political sentiments aren't too hard to guess, but his tweeting tends to be informative and interesting, with the occasional dash of somewhat bipartisan humor.
John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang)
Who: Talk Show Host
Tweeter: To be clear about what we're getting into, John Fugelsang hosts So That Happened on Current TV, the only cable news network more liberal than MSNBC. However, Fugelsang is an experienced entertainer and stand-up who can craft very funny tweets even while dropping knowledge about politicians and their policies.
Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman)
Who: Comedian
Tweeter: Stand-up and Comedy Central star Sarah Silverman is another comedian who mixes a liberal dose of politics in her tweets. She's just as likely to post a link promoting a Democratic Senate candidate and follow that up with musings on the size of Mr. Clean's wang.
Baratunde Thurston (@baratunde)
Who: Comedian and Author
Tweeter: Baratunde, author of the NYT best-selling How to Be Black, describes himself as a "a politically-active, technology-loving comedian from the future," and that sounds about right. He's a left-leaning and funny, frequent tweeter.
Michael Moore (@MMFlint)
Who: Filmmaker
Tweeter: As is the case with Sarah Palin, following passionate liberal Michael Moore won't yield any even-handed politically-balanced tweets. The filmmaker and documentarian tweets a lot, however, posting a wide variety of relevant links and retweets. And every now and then he might break up the earnest flow with a wisecrack or two.
Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA)
Who: Former VP Nominee
Tweeter: Former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin hasn't just been hiding in her icy Alaskan retreat killing moose with crossbows. Since she ran for the second-highest office in the land in 2008 she's been actively using social media to express her opinions on the news of the day. At the least she may have something interesting to say on election night—depending on how you define the word "interesting."
Markos Moulitsas (@markos)
Who: Blogger
Tweeter: Markos Moulitsas founded the huge liberal group blog Daily Kos. If you're looking for an unapologetically liberal take every time as well as sharp-eyed media criticism, he may be your man.
Anthony De Rosa (@antderosa)
Who: Reuters Columnist
Tweeter: Anthony De Rosa, a columnist and social media editor for Reuters, is one of the most tireless tweeters in the business. If you want to be ahead of the game on Twitter, he is one of the best to follow for fresh information on election returns and other election-related developments. Also, every now and then, being an unending font of news gets to De Rosa and he just cracks jokes.
Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt)
Who: Comedian
Tweeter: Popular comedians are a dime-a-dozen on Twitter and many of them save their best material for stage, anyway. Then there's Patton Oswalt, whose raw, tweeted riffs on live events often put to shame the highly polished routines of lesser stand-ups. Oswalt has a liberal sensibility but is truly democratic when it comes to spreading his wealth of jokes.
Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch)
Who: Billionaire
Tweeter: Australian-born billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch runs a host of conservative news outlets and his tweets often reflect a right-wing point-of-view, but Murdoch also clearly has a super-wealthy old man's entertaining disdain for saying what he thinks others might want to hear.
Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox)
Who: Writer
Tweeter: An American contributor to the UK Guardian, Ana Marie Cox cut her teeth blogging for DC's original troll-blog, Wonkette. Her cynically funny tweets reflect it.
Lizz Winstead (@LizzWinstead)
Who: Comedian, Co-Creator of The Daily Show
Tweeter: Comedian Lizz Winstead co-created The Daily Show, so she's completely at home ripping into politicians and political idiocy. Click the follow button on her Twitter page if you like Daily Show-style insight often balanced by jokes just for the sake of joking.
Dave Weigel (@daveweigel)
Who: Political Reporter
Tweeter: Dave Weigel writes for Slate and frequently appears on MSNBC. It isn't easy to put him in a box, politically-speaking. Regardless of where his own politics stand, Weigel is often funnier and snarkier than your average political reporter.
Melissa Harris-Perry (@MHarrisPerry)
Who: Talk Show Host
Tweeter: MSNBC talk show host and Tulane professor Melissa Harris-Perry is unabashedly liberal and unabashedly smart. She tends to tweet juicy chunks of political brain food and links, spiced with a dash of sly wit.
Cory Booker (@CoryBooker)
Who: Mayor of Newark, NJ
Tweeter: Cory Booker is the democratic mayor of Newark, NJ, and probably a superhero. He's rescued women from burning buildings and in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy opened his own home to as many displaced residents as he could comfortably take. Mayor Booker also has, among politicians, a particular kind of genius for social media.
Dennis Miller (@DennisDMZ)
Who: Comic, Talk Show Host
Tweeter: Dennis Miller, once a comic noted for spinning his stand-up into digressions on subjects that normally never make it into comedy routines, has evolved—or devolved, depending your point of view—into a right-wing pundit. He can still make a joke. Apparently.
Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack)
Who: Comedian and Author
Tweeter: Michael Ian Black isn't always overtly political, but when he is, the stand-up comic, actor, director, and author has a lot of fun with poking at hot-air filled right-wing ego balloons.
Alec Baldwin (@ABFalecbaldwin)
Who: Actor
Tweeter: Alec Baldwin was a leading man of the cinema who morphed into one of the funniest comedic actors on TV. He's also an outspoken liberal with vague political ambitions of his own. He's also quite possibly crazy. In some respects he's like the Bizarro Universe Donald Trump, in that both men tend to pop off and make intense political statements and pout a lot in their publicity photos but they sit on opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Who: Billionaire Republican
Tweeter: Donald Trump may seem like a crazed billionaire and reality TV star with a small, wild mammal nesting on his head, but he's also a die-hard conservative and, what can we say, the guy is rarely boring. Whether you actually agree with Trump or just want to hate-follow him, he'll surely give you something to think, talk, or furiously bitch about.
Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC)
Who: Talk Show Host
Tweeter: Joe Scarborough, an ex Florida congressman and Republican, hosts MSNBC's popular morning talk show Morning Joe. He and co-host Mika Brzezinski act as political and personal left-right foils for each other and a revolving panel of pundits and writers, demonstrating a chemistry that's often as annoying as it is interesting to watch. Scarborough makes no apologies for his right-wing views but at the same time he's that rare contemporary conservative who will often call it as he sees it, even when what he sees is some seriously stupid bullshit on the right.
Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight)
Who: Statistician
Tweeter: The jury is out as to whether Nate Silver, who runs the New York Times' 538 blog, is a wizard or merely a talented statistician. No matter what, Silver clearly knows his shit. He surveys all the polls in their biased and unbiased grandeur, massages them with special formulas, and often ends up predicting election results correctly, making no one in politics happy, much of the time. Silver's Twitter feed is often surprisingly feisty and always informative.