Donald Trump is reaching new heights in his domination of the political conversation on Facebook.
In the week before Christmas, the GOP front-runner generated just over 50 million interactions on Facebook — likes, shares, posts and comments — nearly double the combined 29.6 million total of all other presidential contenders, according to data provided by the social media service. The explosion in traffic occurred in the wake of Trump’s controversial proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.
The 50 million interactions from 14 million unique users represent Trump’s highest total for any week of the year. Trump tallied 41.6 million interactions on Facebook the first week of September; the highest total of any of his competitors was the 28.3 million interactions Hillary Clinton racked up when she announced her campaign in April. Clinton tallied 9.4 million interactions the week before Christmas; Bernie Sanders got 6.5 million.
The total interactions for the first three weeks of December demonstrate just how much of the conversation Trump consumes: Trump, 98.9 million; Clinton 22.9 million; Sanders 14.5 million; Ted Cruz, 13.7 million; Ben Carson, 6.7 million. Nobody else was over 5 million.
Trump’s dominance of the on-line discussion is not new, but it is getting bigger. Of the 20 most active weeks on Facebook among all the presidential candidates in 2015, Trump accounts for 17 of them, the other three belonging to Clinton.
It is also worth noting that there were 25 instances this year of a single candidate being discussed by more than 5 million unique Facebook users in a week. Three of those instances were Hillary Clinton; one was Bernie Sanders; the rest were all Trump. Trump has topped 10 million unique users talking about him three times. No other candidate hit that milestone in 2015.
It is worth noting that this data makes no attempt to part the sentiment of the comments being posted; a significant share of the conversation about Trump (and the rest of the candidates) is probably negative.
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