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