Clinton, Trump, Cruz make biggest splashes on Facebook

The presidential campaign announcements of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D), Donald Trump (R), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) made the biggest splashes on Facebook, according to data provided by the social network over the last several months.

The data includes interactions — including likes, comments, shares and posts — generated on the social network in the 24 hours around an announcement.

{mosads}“It’s everything that’s happening throughout the Facebook ecosystem in the U.S., so if I were to post on your page — in the relevant time frame about the relevant candidate — that would count as an interaction,” said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone. “If I went to the candidate’s page and posted on his or her page about something, or commented, or shared a post, that’s all taken into consideration.”

Clinton led the pack, with 4.7 million people generating 10.1 million interactions around the time of her announcement. The former secretary of state announced that she was running in April using a social media-friendly YouTube video that was also posted directly to Facebook.

Real-estate mogul Donald Trump made the biggest splash among Republicans, with 3.4 million users generating 6.4 million interactions about his announcement.

Trump has a high profile, and has surprised some observers by moving to the front of many polls despite controversial comments about Mexican immigrants and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Cruz lacks the global profile of Trump or Clinton. But he was the first major candidate to announce he was running from either party, a strategy designed to help him break out from a crowded field of Republicans. The conservative senator’s announcement ultimately garnered 5.7 million interactions from 2.2 million people.

No other candidates had more than a million people talking about their announcements on Facebook.

Clinton was significantly ahead of all other Democrats. The announcement for the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is running for the Democratic nomination and has drawn large crowds to many rallies, garnered 1.2 million interactions from 592,000 people.

Five candidates’ announcements elicited interactions from less than 100,000 users: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), former New York Gov. George Pataki (R), former Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and former Sen. Lincoln Chafee (D-R.I.). 

Chafee came in dead last, with 20,000 users generating 27,000 interactions about his June announcement.

With Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s announcement this week that he is seeking the Republican nomination, the 2016 field is largely complete. Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) is expected to announce a run, and Vice President Joe Biden is reportedly still mulling a bid.

The data provided by Facebook provides no insight into how users feel about a candidate. A negative comment about a candidate counts toward the overall number of interactions as much as positive ones do.

But the numbers do offer a picture of which candidates made an impact with their announcements — the first time a campaign gets to make its case to the public, media and donors.

“What it shows is the candidates that are generating a lot of conversation about their particular announcements,” Stone said.

The online conversation can be affected by events on the campaign trail.

In the week before Trump read Graham’s phone number during a speech broadcast on television, the South Carolina senator was averaging just 32,000 interactions a day on Facebook. The day his phone number was broadcast by Trump, 329,0000 people generated 622,000 interactions.

Data provided by Facebook also shows an uptick in chatter after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) delivered a well-received speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit in January.

Facebook has become a critical platform for the digital side of presidential campaigns. Messages broadcast over the platform are often seen as more trustworthy because users are interacting with people they know and trust.

Campaigns can also harness the troves of data that social networks like Facebook collect about their users. In 2012, President Obama’s reelection campaign would analyze supporters’ friends, determine which were most likely to be open to voting for Obama and push supporters to reach out to those individuals.

The service has 1.44 billion monthly active users, though most of those people live outside of the United States.