The people running for Governor aren’t on TV. They don’t have yard signs. But they are working – and in some cases spending – to spread their messages online.
Who has the most likes? The most followers? And who has the best content? We took a look at the social media efforts by 2014 candidates.
Grades reflect the size and depth of a candidate’s following as well as the quality of their social media output.
All of the numbers are current as of Sunday evening, October 27. If candidates have more than one account (e.g. separate accounts for official and campaign), we judged the campaign account.
Allyson Schwartz
Grade: A
Facebook fans: 48,030
Twitter followers: 1,857
RTs/100 tweets: 606
The Congresswoman has the biggest following of all the candidates, including the incumbent. Her good facebook feed bolstered by paid advertising and professional graphic design work. Schwartz along with Tom Wolf are in a different league, given that they have real money behind their online efforts.
Tom Wolf
Grade: A-
Facebook fans: 30,338
Twitter followers: 836
RTs/100 tweets: 174
So far in the race, Wolf is the king of memes. The staff of the former Pa. Revenue Secretary regularly puts out quality graphic design. His campaign has a full-time presence on social media and the second-largest following in the race.
Tom Corbett
Grade: B+
Facebook fans: 21,149
Twitter followers: 3,293
RTs/100 tweets: 92
He has a decent footprint and it’s improved in the past few weeks, but his accounts haven’t quite heated up for 2014 yet. His following is mostly 2010 rollover. If you were to judge by social media, the Governor is just starting to get ready for re-election.
John Hanger
Grade: B-
Facebook fans: 3,498
Twitter followers: 659
RTs/100 tweets: 120
Hanger has quality interactions with his followers, who are very engaged. The former Department of Environmental Protection Secretary has a smaller following relative to candidates who can spend money, but he makes a solid showing for the cost-free effort.
Katie McGinty
Grade: B-
Facebook fans: 3,516
Twitter followers: 359
RTs/100 tweets: 109
She’s been in the race awhile but is relatively new to social media. She was the last major candidate to start up accounts. That said, her feed is good. She keeps it fresh with her statewide travels.
Ed Pawlowski
Grade: C+
Facebook fans: 4,623
Twitter followers: 62
RTs/100 tweets: 7
The Allentown Mayor has a better Facebook presence than some of his rivals, but his Twitter account stinks. Among all candidates, no one has a bigger disparity between the two.
Rob McCord
Grade: C
Facebook fans: 2,203
Twitter followers: 965
RTs/100 tweets: 171
The State Treasurer has a lively feed, but his following is seriously lacking. Granted, he only officially joined the race a month ago. But as a statewide official, McCord should have a leg up when it comes to attracting likes and follows. It doesn’t show.
Jo Ellen Litz
Grade: D
Facebook fans: 507
Twitter followers: 189
RTs/100 tweets: 2
She’s a Lebanon County Commissioner, so her small following matches her low profile. But she does get around the state a lot and keeps up the pages decently.
Max Myers
Grade: D-
Facebook fans: 631
Twitter followers: 178
RTs/100 tweets: 23
The pastor from Cumberland County is not a major candidate, so it’s little surprise he’s not generating much interest. His accounts are not updated frequently.
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6 Responses
Hola!
Eu Tambem batalho de queratocone e acreditem que a vemos a vida de outra forma devido a isto.
Tudo começou com os meus dezoito anos que sei o
que é viver com queratocone
Ler o seu blog ajudou-me imenso pois infelizmente existem muitas pessoas que
sofrem disto
Boa sorte a todos os doentes como eu
Cumprimentos
What’s with all the hating on PoliticsPA?
The article was just an assessment of the campaigns in the area of social media.
It doesn’t pretend to be a predictor of the outcome nor of who is better on various issues.
To some extent, it probably just shows how important each campaign thinks social media is.
The article demonstrates outreach efforts and offers some insight into how the campaigns view social media – particularly whether they see it as a valuable tool or ancillary – and also speaks to how forward thinking the candidates/campaigns are. Suggesting that PoliticsPA is foregoing other forms of analysis in favor of this one is more or less a false choice logical fallacy and, in all honesty, probably not the best idea for them anyway. In depth coverage isn’t exclusive to polished policy position statements – sometimes reporters must dig a little deeper or find creative or otherwise unusual areas for analysis to provide a fuller picture.
This is interesting, but not really worthy of our consideration. Social media is totally unrepresentative of how many votes or how much money they will have garnered by the end of this important race.
For example, McCord will be in either 1st or 2nd place, and we all know it – but he has gotten a “C” (so arbitrary)..
Likewise, Max Myers has 15% of what Schwartz has – but he will not get an equal 15% in terms of money or votes.
I really respect the work that PoliticsPA does, but the fact that this is the headline story is kind of ridiculous.
How about an comparison/analysis of one the policy papers on a particular issue that several of the gubernatorial candidates have released? Any of them!
Thats why allyson schwartz is the front runner rob mccord for being a state wide office holder is pathetic.