Nick Clegg is crowned as least popular politician on Twitter
Nick Clegg has defied expectations to top a poll, albeit for the wrong reasons, after new research named the Lib Dem leader as the most unpopular party leader amongst Twitter users.
Whilst the Liberal leader was mentioned a total of 66,000 times on the site more than 40% of these were openly critical with just one in ten messages expressing support in the wake of a series of scandals, the most serious being allegations of sexual impropriety by senior Lib Dem Lord Rennard.
Some succour could be found from the fact that rival leaders, Labour’s Ed Milliband, was similarly poorly received, with only 39,400 mentions of which 24% were positive and 36% negative.
Bucking this trend was embattled Prime Minister David Cameron who was, unsurprisingly, the most mentioned political leader with his name cropping up 183,000 times.
More interestingly the Conservative leader was also the most well received with 46% of tweets actually being positive and just 41% critical.
It had been assumed that Twitter users are generally younger and more left-wing than the general population although Cameron was given a boost by a charity appearance in a One Direction video.
The figures were compiled by research firm Social which looked at interactions throughout the month of February to gauge public opinion.