Not even close
Stuff reports:
Prime Minister John Key holds a clear advantage over his rivals on social media heading into September’s general election.
Key has almost three times the followers on his Facebook page and Twitter account than all other party leaders combined.
His official Twitter feed has 110,000 followers; almost 10 times as many as the next most followed party leader on Twitter – Russel Norman of the Greens with 11,500.
Labour leader David Cunliffe commands a Twitter audience of 9926.
How does this compare to other countries? How many Twitter followers per 1,000 populations do the PMs and Opposition Leaders all have. Here’s their followers per 1,000 population:
- John Key (NZ) 25.0
- Steven Harper (Canada) 13.8
- Justin Trudeau (Canada) 11.2
- Tony Abbott (Aus) 13.0
- David Cameron (UK) 11.1
- Eed Miliband (UK) 5.1
- Bill Shorten (Aus) 2.8
- David Cunliffe (NZ) 2.2
So the NZ PM has twice as many Twitter follows per capita as the Canadian, Australian and UK PMs. And David Cunliffe has fewer followers than any of the other opposition leaders.
On Facebook, Key’s official page has 149,873 likes, while the official pages of all the other party leaders combined have 45,038 followers/likes.
Interesting the leader with the 2nd most “likes” on Facebook is Winston Peters.