Rand Paul is already marketing himself as the millennial-friendly choice for 2016. But one thing is not boding well for him: his Facebook mentions after he announced his candidacy pale in comparison to Ted Cruz.
National Journal has a great graph of the numbers provided by Facebook–Cruz’s campaign got almost three times as much play on Facebook as Paul’s. They measured this by likes, posts, comments, and shares related to the two would-be presidents within 24 hours of their respective announcements.
Cruz’s March 23 announcement had 5.7 million total interactions, versus Paul’s 1.9 million on Tuesday.
One possible reason for the disparity: Cruz may be more hated by liberals, and thus generated more frantic posts from the left. Cruz also announced first, meaning he officially kicked off 2016. National Journal also notes that Paul announced on a heavier news day than Cruz.
Interestingly, DC had the highest engagement on Cruz, while Kentucky had the highest for Paul, suggesting that the political class in more invested in Cruz than in Paul.
The top issue discussed around Cruz was foreign policy, while for Paul it was LGBT issues.
There is, however, one Facebook metric where Paul is beating Cruz: he has 1.9 million likes on his page, to Cruz’s 1.2 million. And, according to Paul’s campaign, his campaign website views were over a million within the first 24 hours of its launch. The largest demographic? 24-35 year olds.
Probably because of all that sweet swag.
