New Hampshire primary: Which candidates are winning (and losing) on social media

By Fusion Staff  |  February 8, 2016 | 4:45pm
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The candidates have been on the campaign trail all week in New Hampshire—and on social media.

After an extremely close win in Iowa, Hillary Clinton is picking up steam on Facebook. She saw the biggest gain in average daily likes of all the candidates, thanks in part to live events, gender barrier-breaking and oh-so-meta posts such as this:


In the Republican primary, Donald Trump maintained his lead on social media, despite a 21 percent decline in average daily likes. He did go silent for 16 hours, which could explain the drop. Marco Rubio’s average daily likes ticked up after his third-place showing in Iowa, but not enough to give him a winning presence on social. His daily average for the week was 17,532 likes, lagging Ben Carson and Ted Cruz.

Likes aren’t votes, but if they were …

Here’s a look at how the candidates are trending on social media heading into Tuesday’s primary:

Average daily likes by candidate

Percentage change reflects average total daily likes for the week of Jan. 31 on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, compared with the week of Jan. 24.

Democratic primary

Average daily likes
by candidate
Bernie Sanders Hillary Clinton
Week of Jan 24 158,879 53,467
Week of Jan 31 187,465 119,416
Change +18% +123%

Republican primary

Average daily likes
by candidate
Donald Trump Ben Carson Ted Cruz Marco Rubio Carly Fiorina Jeb Bush John Kasich Chris Christie Jim Gilmore
Week of Jan 24 245,065 85,787 35,640 10,984 3,760 4,561 2,115 1,742 140
Week of Jan 31 192,771 61,413 37,271 17,532 6,302 4,800 2,667 1,574 160
Change -21% -28% +5% +60% +68% +5% +26% -10% +14%

Attack ad gone wrong

Jeb Bush posted this ad on YouTube, presumably hoping to undermine Trump’s momentum. Unfortunately for Bush, the video earned the distinction this week of being the only video to get more dislikes than likes.

Feminist win

Hillary Clinton’s most liked post of the week:

Feminist loss

Carly Fiorina’s most liked post of the week:

Important clarification

Last week Arnold Schwarzenegger made robo-calls inviting voters to join John Kasich in a live conference call event. Some people got confused. The Kasich campaign responded by posting this message:

Most popular farewell

Four candidates dropped out of the race last week: Martin O’Malley, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, and Rick Santorum. But only Huckabee had the unfortunate honor of receiving the most likes for his farewell post.

Data source: Candidate posts between Jan. 31 and Feb. 7 on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. If the candidate maintains multiple accounts on a platform, data was collected on each of the candidate’s accounts if known.

Election data team: Ross Goodwin, Sam Lavigne, Daniel McLaughlin, Kate Stohr.

Kate Stohr is a data journalist and community builder based in San Francisco, CA.

 
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