If everyone in the UK were on Facebook, Nick Clegg could win the greatest share of votes next week.
Since the first televised election debate, Clegg and his Liberal Democrats have added Facebook fans much faster than the other leaders or parties – though all parties have added fans, Clegg’s gathered nearly 10 times the number of Facebook admirers he had going in to the first debate, according to Famecount…
(Gordon Brown uses a Downing Street profile).
Facebook is the most popular UK social network and, hence, probably more representative than Twitter. If electors vote for the same parties of which they are Facebook fans, then the Lib Dems would score a narrow turnout victory over Conservatives, with ruling Labour a distant third.
Lib Dems had long been on the sidelines of the Labour-Conservative duopoly, until this month’s first ever televised debates gave Clegg a profile boost.
Drawing direct lines between social media habits and real-world actions is difficult to predict, but online communities do tend to gather momentum around particular causes, whether it be petitioning for the re-introduction of Wispa or for Rage Against The Machine to dash Joe McElderry’s Christmas No. 1 dream – a phenomenon that’s now inspiring a similar effort behind Clegg.
But, on a different metric, the novelty’s already wearing off. The Lib Dems’ website lost share of visits to Conservatives and Labour following last week’s second debate, Hitwise shows…
Google Trends shows how searches for each of the three leaders spiked during the debates but have tailed off since…
And Trendistic shows how Cameron and Brown caught Clegg up for mentions during the second debate…