Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives continue to lead the election conversation on Twitter, although most of the chatter about Tim Hudak’s party remains overwhelmingly negative, according to a new analysis of tweets.

The Ipsos Reid study conducted exclusively for CP24 and CTV News looked at tweets that were published during the third week of the provincial election campaign.

The analysis suggests 44 per cent of the Twitter discussion was about the Tories, a sharp drop from the party’s dominant total of 62 per cent in week two.

Once again, a majority of the tweets about the Tories had a negative tone (65 per cent negative to eight per cent positive), as Hudak continued to tout a job creation plan he is promising to implement if he is elected premier June 12.

While the Tories had fewer mentions, the NDP claimed a larger share of the conversation (22 per cent, up from 12 per cent in week two), as the party’s leader, Andrea Horwath, promised to freeze tuition costs, reduce emergency room wait times and cut auto insurance rates.

A majority of the tweets about the NDP were split between positive (30 per cent) and negative (30 per cent), with the remaining tweets staying neutral.

Ipsos Reid said Horwath’s promise to reduce hospital wait times won some positive words, while negative commentators accused the NDP plan of being too similar to the Liberal plan. Negative tweeters also pointed to last week’s announcement that prominent NDP supporters are losing faith in Horwath’s direction.

Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals finished second with 34 per cent of all election-related tweets, an increase of nine per cent. The discussion about the Liberals remained largely neutral (43 per cent), although 39 per cent of the tweets were negative. Many of the negative ones focused on past Liberal scandals or troubles, including the cancelled gas plants and failures with key interest groups such as teachers, Ipsos Reid said.

The increase in chatter about the NDP and Liberals coincided with the lifting of a ban on radio, television and print advertisements, and the release of the New Democrats’ platform.

Here are some additional highlights:

• Based on past Ipsos Reid studies, Canadians tweet an average of 1.49 times when discussing a public issue. In this election, Ontarians appear to be more active. Ipsos Reid said the level of Twitter users’ engagement surrounding all three parties was considerably higher than the national average (3.19 tweets while discussing the NDP, 2.68 for the Liberals and 2.38 for the Tories).
• Four in 10 Ontarians are talking politics and policy on Twitter.
• Those most involved in online chatter are much more likely to say that they are paying close attention to the campaign (45 per cent) compared with Ontarians who are not engaged online (only 28 per cent of them say they are paying attention).

Ipsos Reid said the analysis involved a Boolean search query of English-language tweets that were published between May 17 and 23.

The polling firm analyzed a random sample of 300 tweets that were written by Ontarians and contained mentions of the NDP, Liberals, Progressive Conservatives or the party leaders.

The provincial parties’ official Twitter accounts and some terms often associated with the federal parties were excluded, Ipsos Reid said.

@ChrisKitching is on Twitter. For up-to-the-minute breaking news, follow @CP24 on Twitter.