New Socialbakers Data, Infographic Show Obama Dominates Romney in Facebook Engagement

Could Trending Facebook Activity Point to Election Results? Fan Activity Shows Users More Interested in Candidates' Personal Story than Political Banter

San Francisco, Calif. (June 14, 2012) — With less than six months to go before the U.S. presidential election, new data from the leading social media analytics provider Socialbakers reveals President Barack Obama commands a dominating lead over Republican contender Mitt Romney (R) in Facebook fan engagement. Based on trending data among all other GOP candidates' Facebook performance thus far, the Obama vs. Romney data raises strong questions about whether Obama's superior social presence could be an indication of how Americans will vote this fall.

"We've been tracking all the Republican candidates' Facebook activities since election season kicked into full swing back in December," said Socialbakers CEO Jan Rezab. "So far, those with the highest level of engagement have emerged as the frontrunners throughout the campaign, with Romney consistently leading the pack for the GOP. But with this new head-to-head comparison of the final two, it's quite clear that Obama blows Romney out of the water. It will be interesting to see how that correlates to the election results in November."

In its final analysis of The Presidential Race on Facebook, Socialbakers data for the month of May reveals:

• Nearly five times as many People are Talking About* (PTA) Obama as Romney.
• Obama gained four and one-half times as many new fans as Romney.
• The President's Viral Reach** exceeds Romney's by almost 25 percent.

The entire infographic and granular data is available at http://www.socialbakers.com/elections/.

Beyond the Numbers—Content also Matters

Aside from sheer numbers, Socialbakers' analysis also uncovers a fascinating trend in the type of content that spurs fans to take action—to like, share and comment on a candidate's posts. It seems Facebook users were far more engaged with positive posts highlighting successes, accomplishments or even revealing a glimpse of the candidates' private lives than they were the standard campaign rhetoric.

For example, an Oct. 29 post by Obama highlighting the success of student loan reforms garnered more than 170,000 comments and was shared 1,817 times, with more than 23,000 'Likes.' Romney's most engaging post on April 11 blamed Obama for poor employment numbers, encouraging fans to 'Like' the post if they "agree he should be a one term president." While the quip did garner more than 60,000 'Likes,' it was shared by fewer than 1,000 people and generated only 4,333 comments.

Meanwhile, by far the most 'Liked' and widely shared post came from perennial candidate Ron Paul's recognition of his 55th wedding anniversary. Paul commemorated the Feb. 1 event with a photo of him and his wife from their wedding day that earned more than 68,000 'Likes' and was shared by nearly 4,000.

"There's been a lot of discussion about whether attack ads and smear campaigns actually work, and it's very interesting that the most engaging posts among all the candidates were the least confrontational," Rezab said. "Could this be an indication that voters don't care about the attack propaganda and they're looking for more insight about a candidate's personality? We can't say for sure, but the data is compelling."

Socialbakers' proprietary social analytics platform helps social marketers uncover actionable insights to measure the effectiveness and drive campaign ROI across all major social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+. For more information, visit http://analytics.socialbakers.com/.

About Socialbakers

Socialbakers is a social media analytics company and the most cited source for global Facebook data with more than 10 million Facebook pages and places indexed. Launched in 2008, Socialbakers' tools include its easy-to-use Engagement Analytics and Engagement Builder. It is the only solution that allows brands such as Lufthansa, L'Oreal, Danone, Vodafone, Samsung, GE Money, Ogilvy, Kraft and Peugeot to measure, compare and contrast the success of their social media campaigns with competitive intelligence. For more information, visit www.socialbakers.com.

* People Talking About (PTA): a Facebook metric that measures the number of unique people who have created a story about a Page in the past seven days.
** Viral Reach (VR): a Socialbakers metric equal to the total number of "likes" and comments multiplied by the average number of friends (140) per Facebook user.

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Media Contact:

Bridget Gilbride
847-415-9333
bgilbride@sspr.com