Project 2025: Shifts in Political Discourse Analyzed Through Social Listening

Note: This insight brief was a collaborative effort with Joe Drymala, founder and lead analyst at Share of Voice, a progressive social listening firm that analyzes public social media conversations to uncover strategic messaging insights for campaigns and causes.

As election season intensifies, political personas rapidly evolve, driven by shifting narratives and policies. Using Infegy Starscape, a social listening platform, we’ve tracked significant changes in conversations from right-wing to left-wing perspectives. Our previous research tracked minute-by-minute sentiment across each political debate between Biden, Harris, Trump, and Vance. For this piece, we’ll use a longer-term perspective. A long-term historical dataset is helpful because it will enable us to retroactively examine how Project 2025, a conservative policy proposal, has catalyzed persona shifts over time, revealing the dynamic nature of public sentiment across the political spectrum.

Project 2025 - A Brief Primer

Project 2025, initiated by The Heritage Foundation, is a conservative political initiative designed to reshape the U.S. federal government and consolidate executive power should Donald Trump win the 2024 election. It advocates for sweeping changes, including reclassifying federal employees as political appointees, dismantling government agencies like the Department of Education, and cutting programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The plan promotes conservative Christian values, including anti-abortion measures and the rollback of LGBTQ+ rights, and aims to align government policies with Trump's agenda. While contributors to the project are closely associated with Trump, he distanced himself on July 5, 2024. This brief will examine how that denial helped ignite enormous progress, attention, and consternation.

Early Conversations Amongst Conservative Political Activists

Let’s now jump into the early Project 2025 conversation. For this, we’ll look at the early rumblings of conversation around the policy proposal.

Low Post Volume, But High Sentiment

We first ran a search for early Project 2025 conversations. Based on Figure 1, you'll note immediately that our search didn’t generate much volume when it officially launched in April 2023 (there was an initial pre-launch conversation, which explains some of the earlier volumes). This isn’t surprising: much of the early discussion around Project 2025 originated from policy wonks and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation without widespread publicity.

Figure 1: Project 2025 Early Post Volume (June 2022 through June 2023); Infegy Social Dataset

Despite the low volume, we did note overwhelmingly positive sentiment, especially around the launch date. Of the sentimental posts (posts that we coded either positive or negative) that we collected in April 2023 when this Project launched, we detected over 90% positivity. This high positivity score in itself was pretty surprising, considering the heavy subject matter that Project 2025 deals with (LGBTQ, the “Deep State,” election fraud, etc.). Let’s now dive into linguistics and a persona analysis to understand why that heavy conversation was so positive.

Figure 2: Project 2025 Positive Sentiment (June 2022 through June 2023); Infegy Social Dataset

Top Early Project 2025 Topics and Hashtags

Next, we ran a linguistic analysis on the top topics people talked about during the early days of Project 2025. Two indicators immediately jumped out to us. First, we saw a high concentration of very positive, pro-Trump topics like “Deep State,” “conservative president,” and the “Heritage Foundation.” We also saw a much less favorable concentration of hashtags around suicide prevention. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention already had it’s own Project 2025 to eliminate suicides. This unfortunate naming coincidence shows how your brand can get overwhelmed if you get back luck with giving it the wrong name.

Figure 3: Early Project 2025 Topics Colored by Sentiment (June 2022 through June 2023); Infegy Social Dataset

Our linguistic analysis gets more interesting as we glance at hashtags, again colored by sentiment (Figure 4). Despite the deep concentration we saw above around conservative-focused topics, we now see a glimpse of Democratic Activism, not yet with extensive teeth (#ProudBlue, #RemoveRepublicans, #ChristianNationalism). Although not yet strong, this early opposition helps explain the explosive reaction we’ll chart in the second half of this brief.

Figure 4: Hashtags Associated with Early Project 2025 Topics Colored by Sentiment (June 2022 through June 2023); Infegy Social Dataset

Initial AI-Generated Persona Analysis

Using Infegy Starscape's AI-driven persona analysis, we identified the critical group of conservative thinkers, comprising roughly 30-35% of the early Project 2025 conversation (Figure 5). By automating persona creation, Infegy empowers us to quickly analyze such groups' attitudes and motivations, providing deeper insights into the evolving political landscape. This group, named “Conservative Activists” by Infegy AI Personas,  is highly supportive of Trump, the MAGA movement, and conservative Christian values, frequently emphasizing constitutional rights and using patriotic and religious symbols in their posts. Our AI-generated personas allow us to instantly detect these supporters' strong positive sentiment, marked by a 90-100% positivity rate toward Project 2025.

Conservative Activists

Distribution: Approximately 30-35% of profiles Sentiment: Strongly supportive (90-100% positivity)

This group comprises staunch conservatives who strongly identify with patriotic and religious values. They are characterized by:

• Strong support for Donald Trump and the MAGA movement
• Frequent use of patriotic symbols (🇺🇸, 🦅) and religious references (✝, 🙏)
• Pro-life stance and conservative political views
• Emphasis on constitutional rights, especially the Second Amendment
• Often self-identify as veterans or have military connections
• Use of hashtags like #AmericaFirst, #MAGA, #Trump2024
• Skepticism or outright rejection of Democratic policies
• Strong emphasis on Christian values and often quote Bible verses

These individuals likely view Project 2025 as aligned with their conservative values and goals for America's future. They often express concerns about perceived threats to traditional American values and see themselves as defenders of these ideals.

Figure 5: Automatically Generated Persona Analyzing Early Project 2025 Conversation (June 2022 through June 2023); Infegy Social Dataset.

Post-Trump Denial Surge of Progressive Attention

Now that we’ve looked at the initial conversation, let’s look at how Project 2025 discussions exploded within the context of an election in 2024.

High Post Volume, But Low Sentiment

For Figure 6, we shifted our search from January 2024 through October 2024. You’ll note that post volume, especially around the 2024 summer political debate, explodes 1000x what it was around the project’s launch. Much of this explosion can be explained by Trump’s explicit denial of knowledge of its contents. We’ve previously written about this phenomenon, known as the Streisand effect. Often, by denying or even engaging with a crisis narrative, your mere acknowledgment can cause an explosive reaction. That’s the case here - discussions of Project 2025 grew upwards of 50,000 collected posts in the days after Trump acknowledged it.

Figure 6: Election-Centered Project 2025 Discussion - Total Volume (January 2024 through October 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.

Figure 7: Election-Centered Project 2025 Distribution (January 2024 through October 2024); Infegy Social Dataset.

Top Election Project 2025 Hashtags

In a linguistic analysis similar to what we ran earlier, we looked at the top hashtags associated with 2024’s Project 2025 conversation. You’ll note a progressive takeover from conservative activists to much more liberal ones, especially hashtags trying to tie Trump to Project 2025 (#TrumpIsProject2025). You’ll also note that the sentiment attributed to these hashtags is dramatically more damaging than we saw before. This is common around explosive and controversial topics (and something we’ve measured extensively in other insight briefs). As political issues get more momentum, they inevitably turn more negative.

Figure 8: Election-Centered Project 2025 Hashtags (June 2022 through June 2023); Infegy Social Dataset.

Election AI-Generated Personas

The AI-generated persona of Liberal Democrats and Harris-Walz supporters marks a dramatic shift from the conservative persona we examined earlier. While the previous persona, consisting of “Conservative Activists”, was staunchly pro-Trump and focused on defending traditional values, this new group represents progressive ideals, advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, Black Lives Matter, and other liberal causes. The earlier conservative group, driven by patriotic and religious symbols, displayed overwhelming positivity toward Project 2025. In contrast, this progressive group, making up 25-30% of profiles, is mainly critical of Trump and his policies, with only 30-35% positive, expressing deep concern over threats to democracy.

Liberal Democrats and Harris-Walz Supporters

Estimated distribution: 25-30% of profiles Sentiment: Mostly supportive, with 30-35% positivity

• Strong supporters of the Democratic Party, particularly Kamala Harris and Tim Walz (presumably for the 2024 presidential election)
• Frequent use of blue heart emojis (💙) and wave emojis (🌊) to signify Democratic allegiance
• Many identify as liberals or progressives and strongly support causes like Black Lives Matter (BLM) and LGBTQ+ rights
• Common profile terms: "Democrat," "Liberal," and "Dem"
• Often self-described as grassroots activists, influencers, or advocates for social causes
• Many profiles invite engagement (open to direct messages) to foster community building within their political sphere
• Emphasis on democracy, equality, and resistance to perceived threats against these values
• Common hashtags: #HarrisWalz2024, #BlueWave2024, #DemVoice1
• Highly critical of Donald Trump and his supporters, expressing concern for the state of American democracy

Figure 9: Top AI Persona for Election Project 2025 Conversation (June 2022 through June 2023); Infegy Social Dataset.

Takeaways for Your Social Listening Practice

The Project 2025 example is a dramatic illustration of a narrative shift driven by social media conversation. Project 2025 began its online life as an under-the-radar conservative discussion mostly among political insiders, but Donald Trump’s denial of involvement triggered a surge of attention from progressives online, who essentially hijacked the topic and made it theirs. Conservatives lost control of the story about their own plan and were compelled to either defend it or distance themselves from it.  

Leveraging social listening through tools like Infegy Starscape is crucial for any business, agency, or political consultancy navigating the dynamic landscape of public sentiment, especially during election cycles. By analyzing evolving political personas and tracking sentiment shifts, organizations can gain valuable insights into the motivations and concerns of various demographic segments. This real-time feedback loop helps refine messaging strategies and anticipate reactions and enables stakeholders to engage more meaningfully with their audiences. As significant conversations around Project 2025 demonstrate, understanding these shifts empowers decision-makers to adapt their strategies proactively, ensuring they remain relevant and responsive in an increasingly polarized environment.

Project 2025: Shifts in Political Persona

Explore how Project 2025's political persona has shifted through social listening insights. Learn about its impact on public sentiment from conservative to progressive perspectives.

Understanding Project 2025

Project 2025, by The Heritage Foundation, aims to reshape the U.S. government along Trump's agenda, affecting federal employees, government agencies, and social programs. Its controversial stance has sparked debates and reactions.

Early Conservative Conversations

Initial discussions on Project 2025 were positive among conservative circles, emphasizing strong support for pro-Trump topics and values. Yet, it faced challenges due to naming conflicts and emerging opposition.

Progressive Surge Post-Trump Denial

Trump's denial of Project 2025 led to a significant rise in interest, especially from liberal activists. This shift highlighted a growing online momentum and discussions tying Trump to the project.

AI-Generated Personas Reveal Shifts

Initially, conservative activist personas dominated discussions with high positivity. Post-Trump's denial, a shift towards liberal personas emerged, focusing on progressive topics and concerns about democratic threats.

Key Takeaway for Social Listening

Project 2025 illustrates how social media can alter narrative control. Enhanced social listening enables stakeholders to strategize messaging and engagement amidst evolving public sentiment, crucial during polarized times.