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Strategy

Could Kanye Beat Trump in an Election? His Following Says Definitely Maybe.

Kanye West For President
All of the 2016 presidential candidates have taken to social media, but their reach is anything but presidential.

Ahhh… numbers. They can be so telling and yet completely misleading. One of the things that social media marketers love to focus on is followers and subscribers. When you look at the reach of the frontrunners for the 2016 presidential campaign the numbers paint a pretty incredible story. Master marketer Donald Trump has amassed a social media following of 12.4 million people (as of 1/30/2016) across the major social media platforms, while Hillary Clinton trails behind significantly with only 8.3 million. Twitter is the most popular choice for candidates to build a following, with Facebook close behind. Interestingly, none of the candidates have invested heavily in building up their following on YouTube.
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To the average person 12.4 million may seem like a lot of followers, but when you compare these candidates to the current Commander and Chief, they are trailing far, far behind. In fact, President Obama has more followers on his Twitter account alone than all the current candidates have on all their account combined. One might say that President Obama trumps even Trump in the social media game.
presidential_candidates_social_following.002
Most people are likely not surprised that a sitting President has a greater following than the presidential candidates vying for his position – even if one of those people was formerly the First Lady (not to mention Secretary of State) and the other was the star of a top rated reality television show. But, what is surprising is that a candidate (although I use the term very loosely) who has announced he is running for president in 2020 has a social media following that is greater than all of the current candidates. 2020 presidential candidate (again, loosely) Kanye West has over 20 million followers.
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What’s even crazier? If you include the following of his first lady (Kim Kardashian West) the aggregate social reach would be close to that of the current sitting president and all 2016 candidates combined!
Before you begin researching what it will take to become a Canadian citizen let me remind you that just because someone has a large amount of followers doesn’t mean that he or she will get the votes to move into the White House… and it definitely doesn’t mean he or she is qualified to be president.
You can follow the top four candidates here:
Donald Trump
TwitterFacebook Instagram • YouTube
Hillary Clinton
TwitterFacebookInstagram YouTube
Bernie Sanders
TwitterFacebookInstagram • YouTube
Ted Cruz
TwitterFacebookInstagram • YouTube
 

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