Who is Using #NetDE on Twitter?

The #NetDE hashtag has become all-O'Donnell all the time lately, or so it feels. And I find I recognize few of the people using it.

The hashtag #netDE was originally declared as a way to flag tweets of interest to Delawareans among the Delaware twitter-users. But now it seems to be spammed-up without-of-state partisans interested in the Delaware Senate primary; especially since the national (?) tea party people decided to get involved in Delaware politics.

So I decided to do a brief, unscientific study and see just who is it that is using the #NetDE hashtag of late.

My survey covers the 12 hours between 8:53 a.m. and 8:53 p.m., Sunday, September 5. That's only because I had cleared my #NetDE column on TweetDeck a bit before heading out into the sunshine around 9 this morning.

Over 40 percent of the people using the #NetDE tag during that period were from out of state.  They were tweeting from Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and "The U.S.A." A few others had no location listed, but didn't appear to be Delawareans.

The non-Delaware folks accounted for more than a third of the #NetDE tweets.

And all of the non-Delaware people were tweeting about politics, from the right-hand side. In fact, two-thirds of all #NetDE tweets during the period were political; only a few of them from the left.

And what can we conclude from this not-very rigorous, not particularly scientific survey?

Politics can be annoying.