Santorum, Pataki bids get less attention on Facebook

Rick Santorum and George Pataki’s presidential campaign launches attracted significantly less attention on Facebook than more high-profile announcements, according to data released by the social platform on Friday.

Santorum, a former Republican senator who ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, saw 266,000 interactions — likes, comments, shares and individual posts — generated by 169,000 unique people in the United States.

{mosads}Pataki’s launch made even fewer waves on the social platforms in the 24 hours after his launch.

Fifty-nine thousand people generated 81,000 interactions about the former New York Republican governor. 

Both men were talked about most in their home states of Pennsylvania and New York, followed by the District of Columbia.

The numbers associated with their announcement paled in comparison to their opponents.

Prior to Pataki, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina (R) was the candidate whose announcement had generated activity from the smallest number of people on Facebook. Her launch led to 515,000 interactions from 304,000 users.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who was the first candidate of either party to announce, generated activity from more than a million users. In Clinton’s case, she bested all other candidates of both parties by generating 10.1 million posts, shares, likes and comments from 4.7 million different people.