Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz dominate 2016 social media mentions
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The fact that 2016 presidential hopefuls haven't declared their candidacies yet does nothing to quell rampant speculation surrounding the race. Unsurprisingly, Politico isdiving right in anyway, looking at social media to see which presumed candidates are most talked about online.
Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz topped Politico's charts by a mile. In the past three months, the two politicians together account for nearly half of the Twitter mentions among posts mentioning a top ten 2016 contender (from a list Politico decided).
Facebook is no different: Cruz and Clinton each appear in 20 percent of the 27 million posts, comments, and content relating to potential White House candidates.
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Of course, social media posts won't necessarily translate to votes, and a post alone doesn't necessarily mean the poster has positive feelings about a candidate. But being an integral part of the conversation is certainly better than being left out of it entirely.
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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.
