--- title: Democratic Debate: Kanye West Stole the Show on Twitter description: The Democratic debate faced some tough competition in it's new Thursday night slot—namely Kanye West. canonical: https://time.com/4218843/democratic-debate-twitter-kanye-west/ author: Daniel White article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-02-12T06:33:59.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-19T07:44:26.497Z article:section: Politics og:title: There Were More Tweets About Kanye West Than the Debate og:description: #DemDebate, however, beat talk of ABC's Thursday night line-up. og:url: https://time.com/4218843/democratic-debate-twitter-kanye-west/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0ca458b0f22e8020/69887d6b3c163980e645c011/timepol-democrat-debate-hillary-clinton-kanye-west1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3026 og:image:height: 1702 og:image:alt: Kanye West acknowledges attendees during his Yeezy Season 3 Collection presentation and listening party during New York Fashion Week og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: There Were More Tweets About Kanye West Than the Debate twitter:description: #DemDebate, however, beat talk of ABC's Thursday night line-up. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0ca458b0f22e8020/69887d6b3c163980e645c011/timepol-democrat-debate-hillary-clinton-kanye-west1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # There Were More Tweets About Kanye West Than the Democratic Debate > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Daniel White](https://time.com/author/daniel-white/) ## Daniel White Feb 12, 2016 6:33 AM UTC  Kanye West acknowledges attendees during his Yeezy Season 3 Collection presentation and listening party at New York Fashion Week on Feb. 11, 2016. Kanye West acknowledges attendees during his Yeezy Season 3 Collection presentation and listening party at New York Fashion Week on Feb. 11, 2016. Andrew Kelly—Reuters by [Daniel White](https://time.com/author/daniel-white/) ## Daniel White Feb 12, 2016 6:33 AM UTC The Democratic debate faced some tough competition in its new Thursday night slot — namely Kanye West. West hosted a promotional event for his album [_The Life of Pablo_](http://time.com/4218225/kanye-west-tlop-life-of-pablo-new-album-livestream/) that hogged Twitter feeds earlier in the day, pushing the Democratic debate to a lower share. Twitter users using the hashtag #DemDebate sent out some 483,180 tweets while users talking about Kanye and his [#YeezySeason3 show](http://time.com/4218490/kanye-west-album-livestream/) at New York City’s Madison Square Garden tweeted nearly 900,000 times during the day, according to [Twitter data](https://twitter.com/SamanthaSubar/status/697996992488673282) compiled by Spredfast. A live stream of West’s show was [so popular](http://time.com/4218490/kanye-west-album-livestream/), according to host platform Tidal, that it was slow for the reported 20 million viewers who tuned in on their computers. Other social-media data reveals that candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders split the share of the night’s mentions on Twitter, while Sanders edged Clinton in the conversation on Facebook, 57% to 43%. Facebook also released data on the unique number of people talking about each candidate in [South Carolina](http://time.com/4215908/south-carolina-primary-new-hampshire-results-donald-trump-bernie-sanders/), the next early-voting state to have its Democratic primary, where Clinton was discussed by more people than Sanders over the past week. Some 111,000 people had 419,300 interactions in the state on Facebook regarding Clinton, while 89,700 people interacted about Sanders 334,300 times. Tweets about the Democrats did fare better than those of ABC’s Thank God It’s Thursday lineup, which includes _Grey’s Anatomy_, _Scandal_ and _How to Get Away With Murder_, according to Spredfast. 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