How social media views the Republican race
By Tom Quiner
Dr. Ben Carson won the debate on Twitter last night.
Look at the chart above. He picked up twice as many followers as his nearest competitor, Marco Rubio, despite a less impressive (in my opinion) performance than most of the other candidates.
According to Facebook, more people were talking about Dr. Carson during the debate than any other candidate. Here is their ranking based on the number of Facebook mentions during the debate:
1) Ben Carson
2) Donald Trump
3) Rand Paul
4) Ted Cruz
5) Carly Fiorina
Here are the number of Facebook followers each candidate has:
Carson: 4,742,973
Trump: 4,201,144
Paul: 2,072,004
Huckabee: 1,855,424
Cruz: 1,553,891
Rubio: 1,101,870
Fiorina: 514,990
Bush: 294,233
Jindal: 285,236
Santorum: 267,741
Kasich: 151,050
Christie: 133,313
Here’s the significance: Barack Obama leveraged social media to win two hotly contested elections.
Dr. Carson and Donald Trump are also enjoying social media success. That’s why their candidacies seem to have legs. (To put the numbers above in perspective, President Obama has 45 million followers today.)
I keep waiting for each of them to implode.
They don’t.
Their popularity on social media reveals the clout the new media has, and the declining clout of the MSM.
I still think their numbers will decline. But when?
I think Trump is more likely to implode sooner than Carson simply because Carson comes across as presidential. Trump uses a lot of emotion where Carson always seems calm, decisive and under control. But they do use social media very well.
Unfortunately, it appears that loud and emotional is what America wants. Otherwise we wouldn’t have this karaoke banana-zombie-cycle mega mashathon of a presidential race where Donald Trump rules the world and Carly Fiorina takes up near the rear. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻