Trump’s Social Candidacy
by Kara Lawson
Since the announcement of his presidential candidacy, Donald Trump has continued to make headlines with controversial remarks that have propelled him to the top of the polls . At Shareablee, we conducted an analysis of Donald Trump’s week-over-week performance on social to see whether the same held true. Trump, who launched his presidential bid on June 16, 2015, has managed to see consistent growth each week despite a dip in actions following Trump’s declaration on immigration during his announcement speech. His social progress is detailed in the chart below, which compares Trump’s social performance to the average Republican presidential candidate. However, following his latest remarks on McCain, you can see that his popularity seems to be waning .
As with the Huffington Post , YouGov and USA Today/Suffolk University polls, on social, Donald Trump is number one among the Republican presidential hopefuls. A further Shareablee analysis on total social actions captured across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram from June 16 – July 19 shows Trump leading the pack with nearly 6.9 million total social actions. This is 110% more actions than the next best performing candidate on social, Mike Huckabee.
Trump’s best performing posts and tweets across social were about his stance on illegal immigration and those announcing his bid for the presidency. His top post on Facebook received over 258K social actions:
On the contrary, while the top posts on social regarding Trump also addressed illegal immigration, they conveyed a vastly different stance. The top performing post on social by actor/director Eugenio Derbez replying to Trump’s Hispanic remarks received over 266K social actions.
This was followed by Jimmy Kimmel’s video post featuring Mexican security guard Guillermo sending a message to Trump on behalf of all Mexicans. The post received 164K actions and nearly 4.5m views on Facebook.
As the presidential race continues to heat up with more and more candidates joining the pack, it will be interesting to see how social performance plays out in votes. Will posts contesting Trump’s campaign outweigh his own social performance, or will he get his wish to #MakeAmericaGreatAgain?
Correction: Chart updated to include latest social data for the week of July 20, 2015.