There is a presidential campaign going on — you might have heard about it on Facebook.
The election is more than a year away, but the conversation about the election is already in full swing on Facebook.
Between January 1 and October 7, 2015, over 68 million people on Facebook in the U.S. made over 1 billion interactions (likes, posts, comments and shares) about the campaign, according to data provided by the social media platform.
That’s an average of more than 100 million interactions a month. By comparison, in the three months prior to the 2014 elections, 43 million Facebook users made 272 million interactions – about 90 million a month. And yes, an enormous chunk of that conversation has been about Donald Trump, who has generated as many as 40 million interactions in a single week.
The states that have shown the highest intensity of political conversation are:
- Vermont — home state of surging Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders;
- Wisconsin — home state of Gov. Scott Walker, an early Republican favorite who dropped out of the race last month;
- New Jersey — home state of Gov. Chris Christie, who remains in the hunt for the GOP nomination;
- New Hampshire — home of the nation's first primary in February 2016;
- Arkansas — the state where GOP candidate Mike Huckabee served as governor and Democrat Hillary Clinton served as first lady.
“Over a year out from Election Day, people are incredibly engaged – posting, liking, commenting on or sharing election-related content an average of 16 times since January 1,” said Erin Egan, Facebook’s vice president of U.S. Public Policy. One can assume that traffic will only increase as the election gets closer.
You can track the ebb and flow of Facebook conversation about each presidential candidate with the USA TODAY/Facebook Candidate Barometer.
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