Billionaire businessman Donald Trump and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders disagree on most issues, but the two presidential candidates have one thing in common: digital domination.
With a combined total of approximately 26.5 million digital engagements over the last 30 days, Trump and Sanders have earned nearly one-and-a-half times as much attention on social media than the 20 other presidential candidates combined.
According to data collected by ListenFirst Media, a New York City-based technology firm, Sanders leads the current field of 22 candidates with the highest Digital Engagement Rating — an aggregate number of daily engagements on social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Wikipedia and YouTube.
The self-described socialist senator has engaged with social media users about 13.6 million times in the past month, while Trump follows closely with a 30-day total of 12.8 million engagements, according to data shared with the Washington Examiner.
Those numbers give the two populist candidates an enormous edge over their competition in terms of the attention they’re receiving in digital discussions.
While Trump has leveraged his brand as a former reality TV host and business tycoon to add to his previous support on social media, ListenFirst’s co-CEO, Jason Klein, says Sanders is succeeding because he posts “an enormously higher volume of original content across his social channels.”
“Sanders has also aggressively leveraged social media as a way to become more transparent with voters, as he often utilizes it to highlight his stance on hot-button issues,” Klein wrote in an email to the Examiner. “He has not only embraced these platforms for his presidential candidacy but has been active and engaged on them well pre-dating his announcement, thus building a strong following on social media, active and excited to engage with his messaging there.”
In comparison to Trump and Sanders, the remaining 20 candidates have a combined number of 17.9 million engagements. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the only other Democratic candidate with over a million engagements, 3.4 million to be exact. In the Republican field, only five other candidates — Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Scott Walker — reached a million engagements or more.
Meanwhile, some GOP candidates who are leading in the polls are failing to garner the same support online. According to the data, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had roughly 750,000 engagements in the month of July while Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., earned a little over 830,000.
Both candidates recently took the lead over Clinton in the key battleground states of Iowa, Colorado and Virginia, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll of swing state voters.
Klein says that in addition to enabling candidates to disseminate their messages to broader audiences, engagement ratings can foreshadow how well a candidate is able to engage potential voters.
“The higher the engagement rating, the more actions a potential voter is taking to engage with the candidate online,” Klein said. “It’s an opportunity for candidates to understand high-level interest and awareness more or less at a census level to complement opinion polls which are based on samples and often not as timely.”
Both the real estate magnate and Vermont senator have generated significant buzz outside of social media as well. Sanders has inched closer to Clinton, the presumed Democratic nominee, in nearly every poll since launching his presidential bid in late April and he recently attracted the largest crowd of any 2016 candidate to date during a campaign event in Madison, Wis.
According to PolicyMic, Trump received more coverage on ABC, NBC and CBS’ evening news programs between June 1-July 31 than all the other candidates combined. The rising GOP candidate has also been searched more often by name on Google than any other candidate in 48 of the 50 states, as previously reported by the Examiner.
Democratic and Republican strategists have theorized that both candidates’ populist rhetoric and distinctive personalities are appealing to Americans on either side of the aisle who are infuriated with Washington and unimpressed by candidates who deliver scripted messages. However, most strategists remain doubtful that either candidate will prevail in securing their party’s nomination.
