Trump smiles during a campaign event at the Adler Theater in Davenport, Iowa, on Saturday. (Photo: Paul Sancya/AP)
On
the eve of the first contest in the 2016 presidential race, the
candidates are hoping to turn seemingly endless months of talk about
their campaigns into actual votes.
And on Facebook, most people in Iowa are talking about Donald Trump.
According
to data shared by the social network, more than 181,000 Iowans have
referenced the Republican frontrunner in the last week — generating more
than 727,000 “interactions” (likes, comments, posts or shares) about
the brash billionaire’s presidential bid.
Trump
has received by far the most attention of any candidate in the race on
Facebook — and considerably more than his closest GOP rival, Ted Cruz.
About
48,000 Iowans have referenced the Texas senator on Facebook over the
last seven days, generating more than 155,000 interactions. Florida Sen.
Marco Rubio, with more than 21,000 Iowans referencing him on Facebook,
is a distant third.
On the Democratic side, frontrunner Hillary Clinton and rival Bernie
Sanders are neck and neck when it comes to Facebook mentions. Nearly
100,000 Iowans referenced the former secretary of state in the past
week, accounting for more than 366,000 interactions, while more than
86,000 Iowans referenced the Vermont senator and self-described
democratic socialist, accounting for more than 335,000 interactions over
the last seven days.
According to the Facebook data, the top five issues Iowans are most interested in are as follows:
1. Wall Street and financial regulation
2. Crime and criminal justice
3. Abortion
4. Taxes
5. The Affordable Care Act
2. Crime and criminal justice
3. Abortion
4. Taxes
5. The Affordable Care Act
The
data released by Facebook should come with a big caveat, however: The
figures do not take into account negative interactions, i.e. the number
of posts mocking Trump or, say, bashing Clinton over her use of a
private email server or her handling of Benghazi. And the data doesn’t
appear to account for a candidate’s own Facebook presence. Trump, for
example, has more than 5 million followers on Facebook — meaning anything posted on the former “Celebrity Apprentice” host’s Facebook wall is bound to get more shares than, say, Martin O'Malley’s status updates.
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