There’s at least one race Hillary has already won: the race for social media buzz. Hillary Clinton’s campaign announcement Sunday dwarfed the announcements of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul in terms of Facebook traffic.
Clinton’s announcement garnered 10.1 million interactions (likes, posts, shares and comments) within 24 hours—nearly twice as much as Cruz’s 5.7 million. Meanwhile Paul trails behind both with just 1.9 million.
Clinton’s announcement video alone was watched 1.8 million times on Facebook.
But it’s not all good news for Hillary—the most-associated topic with her name in the week before her campaign launch? “Government ethics.” She also has only 643,879 likes on Facebook, to Rand Paul’s 1,889,776.
Good publicity or bad, however, the numbers speak to one of Clinton’s undeniable strengths: her name recognition. Many people still aren’t sure what this “Ted Cruz” character is about; everyone knows who Hillary Clinton is. In a recent survey of millennials, for example, 45 percent of 18-to-34-year-olds had never heard of Rand Paul, while 27 percent had never heard of Jeb Bush. Zero percent had never heard of Hillary.
The top traffic for Clinton’s announcement came from D.C. and Arkansas—where Clinton once presided as First Lady—followed by West Virginia, Kentucky, and Illinois.
