Trump's 143M followers or Biden 21M engaged ones?

If the total accumulated followers determine the winner, Trump will win. However, if engagement or follower growth is more relevant, Biden will win.

The Republican White House ticket has 152 million followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram combined, which is 4 times the number of followers the Democrat’s ticket has. However, the Democrats’ followers are 2 times more engaged. 

Social Media analytics may be a better predictor of an election outcome than traditional polling. Global software house Opentrends, Inc. has developed a free non-partisan portal ELECTIONDIGITALTRENDS.

Since 2008 every US presidential election has been won by the candidate with the most social media followers. The relevancy of engagement activity data has not yet been proved. 

Besides tracking the total accumulated number of followers. Election Digital Trends also measures Daily Follower growth (DFG), Daily Engagement per 1,000 Followers (DEF), and Daily Effort Effectiveness (DEE). The following are summaries of our conclusions for each metric: 

Over the past 2 months the Democrats have gained about 4 million new followers, double that of the Republicans (2 million new followers). This indicates that Trump’s ticket may have generated less interest in comparison to the Democrats, but it could also mean that it has just reached critical mass. 

The Democrats’ follower base is consistently twice more engaged than that of the Republicans. About a fifth of the Democrats are engaged daily (reacting to posts by sharing, liking or commenting) as opposed to 10% of Republicans. This could mean that many of the Republican followers are no longer interested and that Democrats have gathered more attention throughout the campaign. It could also mean that Republican followers don’t feel the need to engage.

The Republicans have a higher number of total daily posts than that of the Democrats. They post almost twice as much as Democrats on Twitter and Facebook. Democrats post more than twice as much as Republicans on Instagram. The latter platform is considered to target a younger crowd, who are more likely to vote Democrat. And while the Republicans’ post more on Twitter and Facebook, their effort is less rewarded by their followers, receiving about half the reactions (e.g. shares, likes, comments) per post on Twitter when compared to the Democrats. Republicans do get much more engagement per Facebook post, but it’s still trailing that of the Democrats. This could mean that enthusiasm for the Republicans is less than that of the Democrats or perhaps that Republican followers being older may not be as active on social media. 

As we find out who the winning ticket is we will draw more conclusions and we will be closer to understanding how social media analytics may be used as reliable tool to predict election outcomes. As a technology company we are constantly researching and developing tools that better our lives. 

For our predictions on the House and Senate races visit this site.

Press contact

For more information, contact Tatiana Gely at <tgely@opentrends.net>