QUID · ARIZONA GOVERNOR · OCT 3 - OCT 9, 2026
Seven days of conversation about Katie Hobbs and Andy Biggs, split between posts that can be placed in Arizona and posts from the rest of the country. Both candidates run negative everywhere, and the week is organized around a debate only one of them attended.
Published polling, shown to set context. A poll asks a sample of voters which candidate they intend to support. Everything else on this page measures something different: the balance of positive and negative labeled posts about each candidate in the captured conversation. A candidate can lead the vote and still take the worse of the argument online, and where the two diverge this page explains the conversation, not the electorate.
Hobbs leads the polling average by about 8 points while reading 37 points worse than Biggs inside Arizona. The comparison is the weakest on this page: Arizona's most recent public poll was fielded on August 25, six weeks before this window, so the two measures do not cover the same days. Note also that Biggs's conversation figure inverts to positive once posts naming Hobbs are removed.
Net sentiment runs on the left axis from −100 to +100. Gold bars carry total daily volume for both candidates combined; hover any bar for the narratives driving that day. Volume peaks on debate day and stays high through early voting. Biggs recovers to positive by Friday; Hobbs never gets above zero.
Arizona is arguing about an empty podium. Hobbs skipped the Oct 7 debate, and the word that follows her through the in-state conversation is 'coward'.
Arizona
3,621 unique authors · 310 original posts
(3% of volume; the rest are reposts and replies).
Sentiment from 2,700 labeled posts, 30.1% of this slice;
stored sample behind the labels 270 documents.
Biggs's own account supplies most of the week's in-state material, and nearly all of it is about Hobbs's absence from the debate rather than about his own program. It is retweeted far more than it is replied to.
Tonight, voters will get to hear my plan and vision for Arizona on the debate stage. They won't hear from Katie Hobbs because she has no plan.
@andybiggs4azOct 7Source
A Hobbs internal poll showing Biggs within the margin of error circulated on Oct 8 and was carried well beyond Arizona. It is the one piece of evidence in the week that is about standing rather than about conduct.
New Hobbs internal has sent the Dems in Arizona into full panic. Biggs is well within the margin of error.
@AndrewKolvetOct 8Source
Several posts the classifier scored positive toward Biggs are plainly aimed at him. This is the expected failure mode in a race where 57 percent of his posts also name Hobbs, and it is the reason the single-subject test matters more here than anywhere else on the microsite.
Governor Hobbs has more important demands on her time than explaining basic reality to Andy Biggs.
@tom__builderOct 7Source
Arizona
3,855 unique authors · 340 original posts
(4% of volume; the rest are reposts and replies).
Sentiment from 3,120 labeled posts, 34.9% of this slice;
stored sample behind the labels 312 documents.
Arizona's in-state conversation about Hobbs is overwhelmingly negative and overwhelmingly mobilizing. Early voting opened mid-week and the dominant register is turnout instruction rather than persuasion.
Arizona, early voting has started today and we need to get out and vote in droves against Katie Hobbs.
@GunnerWereyoteOct 8Source
Local broadcast is the one source putting a structural question to her numbers rather than an accusation: whether she can hold the independent voters who elected her.
Will Gov. Katie Hobbs lose independent voters? Former GOP congressional candidate Daniel Keenan tells The Faceoff panel why he thinks Hobbs will struggle to keep them.
Outspoken with Bruce and Gaydos, KTAR NewsOct 8Source
Hobbs's in-state positive cell is the smallest in the race at 61 stored documents. Little of it is advocacy for her; most is pushback against the attacks, which is what a defensive week looks like in this data.
You're right, both parties do suck. But it's not really about politics anymore, it's about morals.
@jpoolioOct 6Source
The same week reads differently depending on where you stand. Net sentiment is plotted from Arizona on the left to the rest of the country on the right; the solid line counts every post naming a candidate, the dashed line counts only posts that name that candidate and not the other.
All posts naming the candidate Posts naming that candidate only
Biggs reads almost identically at home and nationally, -23.7 against -24.5, which is unusual on this microsite. The number is misleading on its own: 57 percent of his posts also name Hobbs, and on posts naming him alone he is positive in both halves, +9.5 at home and +26.1 nationally. His headline figure is measuring the temperature of the race, not his own standing.
Hobbs is the more negative of the two everywhere, and the gap widens rather than closes when the test is tightened: -83.5 at home and -64.8 nationally on posts that name her alone. Arizona is harder on her than the rest of the country is, which is the opposite of the pattern most incumbents on this microsite show.
Geography, not party. Both columns cover the same week and the same two candidates; what separates them is which arguments actually travel.
Arizona is arguing about conduct. The debate Hobbs did not attend, what her absence says, and what to do about it now that ballots are out. Water rights and school choice appear, but as ammunition rather than as subjects.
Nationally the race is a data point. A Center Square wire piece reprinted across dozens of local mastheads, and an internal poll suggesting the seat is competitive. Only 3 percent of the conversation is original writing, the lowest share on the microsite.
The national halves are larger and flatter, and a single syndicated wire story accounts for a large share of them.
Rest of United States
13,910 unique authors · 730 original posts
(3% of volume; the rest are reposts and replies).
Sentiment from 7,823 labeled posts, 27.7% of this slice;
stored sample behind the labels 1,029 documents.
A Center Square piece on Biggs's platform was syndicated to local outlets across the country on Oct 9 and appears, word for word, in all four national cells of this race. One story counted many times is most of the difference between 28K national posts and 730 originals.
U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs is framing his campaign for governor around economic affordability, water management, and border security.
Chris WoodwardOct 9Source
Outside Arizona the only story with real engagement is the internal poll. Accounts with no connection to the state carried it, which is why Biggs's national figure improves most sharply once posts naming Hobbs are removed.
An internal poll shared in a political post claims Andy Biggs holds a narrow 4-point lead over Katie Hobbs in a potential Arizona matchup.
Did You Know WorldOct 8Source
The loudest national material in Biggs's favour is not reporting or policy. It is capital-letter endorsement from entertainers, reposted by accounts that post about nothing else in this corpus.
Dear fellow Arizonans, we need a new governor who will make Arizona more affordable and help Arizona families. Vote Andy Biggs for governor.
@RobSchneiderOct 9Source
Rest of United States
20,593 unique authors · 1,086 original posts
(3% of volume; the rest are reposts and replies).
Sentiment from 12,650 labeled posts, 32.8% of this slice;
stored sample behind the labels 1,644 documents.
At -49.2 across 12.6K labeled posts, Hobbs carries the heaviest national negative of the two. Unlike Biggs, removing posts that name her opponent makes it worse rather than better, which means the hostility is aimed at her directly.
Arizona governor Katie Hobbs is a criminal who took bribes.
@RobSchneiderOct 7Source
The Center Square piece about Biggs also lands in both of Hobbs's national cells, positive and negative, because it names them both. It is the clearest demonstration on this microsite of why a national volume figure is not a measure of national interest.
U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, is framing his campaign for governor around economic affordability, water management, and border security.
Chris WoodwardOct 9Source
Where the national conversation does engage with Arizona's governing record rather than the campaign, it is about water rights and school choice. Both appear in the retweeted debate material and in the replies arguing against it.
I sure wouldn't want someone this insecure to be negotiating water rights for Arizona.
@GrandmaGayleOct 7Source
This page is the product of two different kinds of work. One half is data that no public API makes available; the other half is judgment about what the data does and does not support.
None of the following could be assembled from public endpoints inside a week.
The data does not interpret itself, and it arrives with traps in it.
Neither half can establish cause. This page measures what was said, how much of it there was, and who said it. It is not a poll, it does not model turnout, and it does not predict the November result.
primary: sentiment targeting, so the sentiment is scored
toward that named figure rather than toward the post as a whole.