Last June I posted on the level of engagement of the presidential candidates on their Facebook pages to see who had the most enthusiastic support on Facebook. This time I updated the Facebook page data to what has changed since June and to see how the level of Facebook activity correlates with outside polling data.
I compiled data from the Facebook pages of 22 presidential candidates,(6 Dems and 16 Reps) who are listed on the Real Clear Politics polling average for the Republicans or the Democrats. Lincoln Chafee was listed at 0% and a search on Facebook for his campign page turned up no official campaign page so I entered a zero for each of his Facebook variables.
I computed correlation coefficients for the variables: The # of page followers (those who click like on the page) in August, gain in followers from June to August, the number engaged with the page (those who clicked on, clicked like, shared or commented on posts from the page), the % engaged (the # engaged divided by the total followers), and the change in the % engagement from June to August with the Real Clear Politics poll average for the candidate. The full data can be seen at the table in the bottom of the post. The table of the correlation coefficients is presented below with statistically significant correlations in bold. There were more significant correlations for Republicans because the sample size was larger.
|
Real
Clear
Politics
Avg D
|
Real
Clear
Politics
Avg R
|
|
|
# Followers Aug
|
0.87
|
0.69
|
|
# Gain in Followers Jun-Aug
|
0.66
|
0.84
|
|
# Engaged Aug
|
0.87
|
0.69
|
|
% Engagement Aug
|
0.47
|
0.30
|
|
% Engagement change, Jun-Aug
|
0.19
|
0.26
|
The correlation plot for the Democrats is shown above for the relationship between the number of followers (by more than 20,000) and the poll average which was the strongest for them. The regression line shows the best fit straight line for the data. The correlation coefficient was 0.87 (75.8% of the variability) which indicates a strong positive linear relationship. If the correlation was +1.0 (100% of the variability) the candidates would all fall on the regression line. The regression line predicts that for every new Facebook follower there is an increase of 0.000028%. In other words, for every 100,000 new followers should be associated with a 2.8% increase in the candidates poll average.
Bernie Sanders is slightly ahead of Hillary Clinton are about even in the number of followers and the number engaged with Clinton leading by 19% in the poll average (she had a 50 point lead in June). Joe Biden (who hasn’t officially announced as a candidate) is a distant third in both the poll average and Facebook followers with Chafee, O’Malley and Webb in the lower right hand corner of the chart.
The above chart for the Republicans summarizes the strongest relationship between the poll average and the gain in followers between June and August (0.84 correlation coefficient accounting for 70.6% of the variability). Donald Trump had the highest gain at 1.49 million in followers followed by Ben Carson at 930,000. They placed 1st and 3rd in the poll average respectively. Jeb Bush was an outlier placing second in the poll average but only gaining 72,000 followers. The other candidates were pretty close to the regression line. The regression equation predicts that for every new follower there should be an increase of 0.0000116% in their poll average. In other words, for every gain in followers of 100,000 there should be an increase of 1.16% in the poll average on the Republican side.
As with all correlation and regression one must be careful about concluding a cause and effect relationship between two new variables. The candidates popularity may lead to an increase in their Facebook following or vice versa. The poll averages of Bush and Clinton suggest that they are buoyed by their name recognition and other factors. However the Facebook presence (and other social media) of a lesser known candidate can circumvent the traditional media in getting their message out.
|
Candidate
|
Party
|
Followers
June
|
Gain in
Followers,
June
|
# engaged
June
|
Engage
% June
|
Followers
Aug
|
Gain
Aug
|
# Engaged
Aug
|
%
Engage
Aug
|
Engage
change
Aug-Jun
|
Real
Clear
Politics
Avg
|
|
Hillary Clinton
|
D
|
871449
|
32263
|
164721
|
0.19
|
1209179
|
337730
|
327399
|
0.27
|
0.08
|
49.3
|
|
Bernie Sanders
|
D
|
530262
|
52423
|
136772
|
0.26
|
1225552
|
695290
|
355980
|
0.29
|
0.03
|
25
|
|
Martin O’Malley
|
D
|
70478
|
4764
|
15535
|
0.22
|
76953
|
6475
|
3675
|
0.05
|
-0.17
|
1.7
|
|
Lincoln Chafee
|
D
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
|
Joe Biden
|
D
|
831968
|
8122
|
8998
|
0.01
|
841644
|
9676
|
1596
|
0
|
-0.01
|
12
|
|
Jim Webb
|
D
|
21745
|
256
|
2366
|
0.11
|
30544
|
8799
|
9956
|
0.33
|
0.22
|
1.3
|
|
Donald Trump
|
R
|
1792016
|
113658
|
53880
|
0.03
|
3282608
|
1490592
|
743935
|
0.23
|
0.2
|
22
|
|
Ted Cruz
|
R
|
1249160
|
4762
|
134836
|
0.11
|
1385876
|
136716
|
242349
|
0.17
|
0.06
|
7.3
|
|
Mike Huckabee
|
R
|
1743599
|
9519
|
231343
|
0.13
|
1827423
|
83824
|
415975
|
0.23
|
0.1
|
4.3
|
|
Rick Santorum
|
R
|
261168
|
1982
|
17289
|
0.07
|
264796
|
3628
|
11625
|
0.04
|
-0.03
|
1
|
|
Ben Carson
|
R
|
1487589
|
74383
|
168658
|
0.11
|
2418003
|
930414
|
869374
|
0.36
|
0.25
|
9.7
|
|
Rand Paul
|
R
|
2001304
|
78429
|
281904
|
0.14
|
2060430
|
59126
|
122158
|
0.06
|
-0.08
|
4.3
|
|
Lindsey Graham
|
R
|
111795
|
3914
|
10982
|
0.1
|
130110
|
18315
|
5621
|
0.04
|
-0.06
|
0.3
|
|
Jeb Bush
|
R
|
178172
|
1888
|
4681
|
0.03
|
250731
|
72559
|
30841
|
0.12
|
0.09
|
10.7
|
|
Scott Walker
|
R
|
283102
|
4901
|
24483
|
0.09
|
359444
|
76342
|
40554
|
0.11
|
0.02
|
7.7
|
|
Marco Rubio
|
R
|
874898
|
13893
|
83916
|
0.1
|
978401
|
103503
|
54927
|
0.06
|
-0.04
|
7.3
|
|
Chris Christie
|
R
|
104785
|
619
|
3014
|
0.03
|
118868
|
14083
|
8055
|
0.07
|
0.04
|
3.3
|
|
Rick Perry
|
R
|
1183094
|
8979
|
40992
|
0.03
|
1208938
|
25844
|
17278
|
0.01
|
-0.02
|
1.3
|
|
Bobby Jindal
|
R
|
243034
|
3504
|
5174
|
0.02
|
277777
|
34743
|
23878
|
0.09
|
0.07
|
0.7
|
|
Carly Fiorina
|
R
|
60165
|
4765
|
12713
|
0.21
|
281637
|
221472
|
86799
|
0.31
|
0.1
|
6.3
|
|
John Kasich
|
R
|
107703
|
479
|
7320
|
0.07
|
138213
|
30510
|
17159
|
0.12
|
0.05
|
0.3
|
|
George Pataki
|
R
|
15391
|
4512
|
29
|
18330
|
2939
|
6892
|
0.38
|
-28.62
|
0.1
|
**Update**
An article was posted on how many fake followers the top Presidential candidates have on twitter. The graph above shows that the front runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have more than 1 million fake followers on Twitter which is almost a third of their total followers. The fake followers are shown in red. All of the candidates have some fake followers Rubio, Sanders and Bush have a much lower percentage than Clinton and Trump. The website twitter audit produced the graph above and can check your twitter account to see how many of your followers are real.
Does this mean that many of the candidates Facebook followers are fake? The correlation of the followers with poll averages suggests otherwise. The next post will look at how the poll average correlates with twitter followers. The candidates all pay Facebook to make their pages more visible.
I looked at my Twitter account (@CSIwoDB) with 849 followers on twitter audit. It says that 96% or 817 of my followers are real. So no one is immune to fake followers on twitter.
**Related Posts**
2016 Facebook Presidential Primary Update: Engagement and Gain
The 2016 Facebook Presidential Primary
It’s All About The Likes
The Impact of the CSI w/o DB Facebook Page on Visits and Engagement