The Best Political Commentators on Twitter

The 2016 campaign is in full swing, but let's face it. Very few people have the time and energy to keep up with everything that's going on in politics. The news cycle is an incredibly fast-moving beast, and that makes it extremely difficult to follow both what's happening in the news and, just as importantly, the plethora of insightful and informative commentary about the things that are happening. Thankfully, that's what Twitter is for. While full-length and long-form political analysis is absolutely irreplaceable, condensing political thought into 140 characters or less can be just as useful in assessing the news — and sometimes it's even better, as a quick and efficient insight could have the ability to reach more people than a 2,000-word article. To that note, here are some of the best political Twitter accounts to follow in 2016.

Of course, this is only a partial list. Many of the best political tweeters are also long-form political writers. But that doesn't mean there aren't a whole lot of fantastic Tweeters from other fields. Graduate students, doctors, and sports journalists are sometimes just as good at political writing as those who do so for a living, and this list includes them as well as the "professional" political writers. In fact, the line between the two has become increasingly blurred.

Molly Ball

Ball writes for The Atlantic and is one of the best campaign reporters in the business. Her combination of hard-nosed realism and good-natured humor never fails to be informative, enlightening, and entertaining.

Elon James White

White is the CEO of the Oakland-based media empire This Week In Blackness and co-hosts the TWiB weekly podcast. His commentary frequently focuses on the intersection of racial politics and national electoral politics, and he's excellent at it.

Imani Gandy

Gandy is White's co-host on the TWiB podcast. An extremely astute intersectional commentator, she is especially good at crystallizing and articulating deficiencies in how political news is reported.

Leah Torres, M.D.

Torres is a practicing OB/GYN and happens to be an excellent feminist tweeter as well. When it comes to articulating pro-choice rebuttals to anti-choice arguments — a task that, unfortunately, is still highly in demand — Torres is absolutely second to none.

Bree Newsome

Newsome became famous earlier this year for removing the Confederate flag in front of the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina. As it turns out, she's just as good at political commentary as she is at activism.

Nate Silver

The founder of the widely-celebrated politics site FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver approaches campaign reporting like the statistician he is: with a firm grounding in historical precedent, empirical evidence, and sound evaluation of polls.

"Will McAvoy"

Will McAvoy is the main character on HBO's The Newsroom, and this is his ostensible — but completely unofficial — Twitter account. The identity of whoever runs it is unknown, but whoever they are, they're damn good at calling nonsense when they see it in American politics.

Jessica Luther

Luther, a Texas-based journalist who writes largely about feminist politics and sports and, frequently, the intersection of the two. She talks about other political issues as well and is one of my personal favorite reproductive rights reporters.

Jamelle Bouie

Bouie writes about politics for Slate, and his tweets are just as good as his articles. He's one of the more creative political writers — here he is making a point I haven't seen elsewhere, for example — and his tweets are just as good as his full-length articles.

Bailey Poland

Bailey Poland is a graduate student who writes extensively on gender discourse in politics, the media, and society. There are few people on Twitter who have both quality arguments to make and are as good at articulating them as she is.