Tweeting in defeat: How candidates concede and claim victory in 140 characters

The concession and victory speech is a ritual in American politics, described by Corcoran as a “rite of capitulation,” in which both candidates at the end of an election sanction the legitimacy of the process, agree on the outcome, and start the political transition. Concession and victory speeches emerged as a distinct convention in the television era, but as web services like Twitter take on a larger role in electoral politics, traditions like the concession are being adapted to new formats. The literature has identified a series of substantive and procedural conventions for conceding and claiming victory, but it is unclear how these conventions hold up as technology evolves. An examination of 200 Twitter feeds from congressional, senatorial, and gubernatorial candidates during the 2010 midterm elections shows that while candidates touch some of the traditional concession themes, the procedural rules to concession have not migrated unchanged to the online world.