19 January 2017

As we all know now, yesterday Antonio Tajani was elected the new president of the European Parliament with 351 out of 713 votes. The S&D’s Pittella put up a fight till the 4th round, but his 282 votes did not cut it. 80 MEPs abstained from the vote.

What happened offline also happened online: a balanced debate with no significant peaks. Twitter results, however, gave only a very slight edge to Tajani over Pittella.

The hashtag #Tajani was used by MEPs 92 times, only 15 times more than the competitor’s #gianni4president.

The most used one was #EPPresident more than 400 times – incidentally, the ‘E’ and the double ‘PP’ unintentional wordplay seemed almost a premonition of the final result :).

The most mentioned Twitter handle was of course @Antonio_Tajani , with more than 400 mentions.

The most active MEP overall was without any doubt Alessandra Mussolini, fellow EPP member of Tajani, with almost 200 tweets and retweets posted in a day. The award for the most active original content tweeter, however, goes to Roger Helmer, who posted more than 40 times about… Brexit.

The most reshared tweets were posted by Mr Verhofstadt (ALDE leader) and Mr Weber (EPP leader) when they announced the new ALDE/EPP parliament coalition.

ALDE and EPP have laid the foundation of a new coalition to move Europe forward. The agreement is open to all other pro-European groups pic.twitter.com/dTSLm7fDVI

— Guy Verhofstadt (@GuyVerhofstadt) January 17, 2017

.@EPPGroup agreed w/ @ALDEgroup on partnership to support @Antonio_Tajani. We are open to other pro-European forces to join this initiative pic.twitter.com/QIhgJLWF9Y

— Manfred Weber (@ManfredWeber) January 17, 2017

Mr Tajani received congratulatory messages from a large part of his peers and many more from the EU Institutions. Here some samples:

Congratulazioni Antonio Tajani @Antonio_Tajani new President of the European Parliament. I wish him and #EP all the best

— Martin Schulz (@MartinSchulz) January 17, 2017

Congratulazioni ad @Antonio_Tajani. Grazie ai @TheProgressives per il pieno supporto. Da domani opposizione costruttiva in Europarlamento.

— Gianni Pittella (@giannipittella) January 17, 2017

A strong signal of stability, Europe is delivering. @Antonio_Tajani will be an #EPPresident worthy of the office. Congratulations! pic.twitter.com/CfWTHAONkI

— Manfred Weber (@ManfredWeber) January 17, 2017

Congratulazioni a @Antonio_Tajani per la sua elezione come presidente del PE. Lavoro insieme da domani per un'Europa migliore.

— Jean-Claude Juncker (@JunckerEU) January 17, 2017

Final result of Parliament president election: @Antonio_Tajani 351 - @GianniPittella 282. For more details visit → https://t.co/Z2VA6iBswZ pic.twitter.com/EUfrhnhv3Y

— European Parliament (@Europarl_EN) January 17, 2017

Curious about what Mr Tajani has to (Twitter) say? Well, we’ll have to wait – he hasn’t posted anything today about his election, although he has been active on Twitter. He is probably waiting to use the new EP President Twitter account (@EP_President) which hasn’t yet been fully set up.