Bernie Sanders Already Winning in Social Media? Vermont Senator Gathers the Most Number of Facebook Followers, Conversations
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is winning it -- on social media during the pre-Iowa caucuses.
Sanders and his rival Hillary Clinton as of press time, are locked in a virtual tie in the Iowa Caucuses, but the Vermont senator is dominating his rival when it comes to social media followers.
According to Politico, Sanders captured about 42.4 percent of the conversation among Iowa citizens on Facebook from midnight to noon of Monday. His record is better than Donald Trump who garnered 21.7 percent and Hillary Clinton with 13.1 percent.
Other candidates were also part of the "Facebook Conversations" with Iowa Republican winner Ted Cruz with 10.7 percent, Rand Paul with 4.7 percent, Ben Carson with 2.6 percent and Marco Rubio with 1.9 percent.
Sanders is clearly the top dog because just among the Democratic candidates alone, the self-proclaimed socialist-democrat captured 73 percent of the conversation, compared to Clinton's 25 percent.
The Republican side is not surprising at all, as controversial magnet and outspoken Trump really got people talking about him as he captured 50 percent, compared to Cruz's 23 percent and Paul's 11 percent.
In a similar report by Reuters, it has declared Sanders as the clear winner when it comes to social media dominance.
Before and during the caucuses, Sanders garnered the majority of Twitter mentions as he was mentioned over 77,000 times during the caucus, while Clinton only got mentioned 52,000 times.
He also got the most followers on Facebook than any other candidate, as he got 15,695 new followers. The Donald came in with a distant second with 10,704 new followers, followed by Clinton with 6,210.
This comes as no surprise as Sanders is pretty popular among American Millennial voters, who make up the majority of social media users.
In fact, Sanders even dominated Yik Yak, an emerging social media network popular among the youth. According to the statistics, Sanders was mentioned in about 60 percent of all the "yaks" that discussed Democratic candidates during the caucuses.
Although it should be noted that dominating social media does not exactly mean it's going to win votes, it does give a great estimate regarding the amount of interest a candidate generates.
The Guardian reported that despite Hillary winning Iowa by a really close margin, it still proved that she's far from winning the national polls. Just months ago, Clinton is clearly ahead of Sanders, but with the recent couple of weeks leading into the Iowa caucuses, Sanders proved that his campaign is working.
With the New Hampshire polls following shortly, it's interesting to see if Sanders will win, or will Hillary take it again with a slight margin.
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