Infographic: how the 2015 election is shaping up on social
On the eve of the 2015 general election some of the major stats to emerge on social media have emerged, with Labour earning the biggest share of mentions on Facebook and Twitter.
According to data collected by social media monitoring company Brandwatch all the parties combined have gathered 10.4 million mentions since the start of the campaign and 9.7 million mentions of candidates since the start of the election trail.
There have been an average of 346,177 tweets per day and so far just over 15,000 people have declared their intention to vote on social media.
With almost 3.5 million mentions Labour has earned the greatest share of voice on social, followed by the Conservatives and UKIP, which both generated just over two million mentions each. The SNP came in fourth, however the party saw considerably less mentions with 1.3 million. The Lib Dems managed a measly 570,000 by comparison.
Looking at party leaders, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon won the popularity contest, generating 55,177 positive mentions on social media, followed by Labour’s Ed Milliband (45,199) and David Cameron (33,825). Nick Clegg fared the worst, generating 10,650 positive mentions.
The biggest election-related moment seen on Twitter so far was the ITV 7-way Leaders Debate on 2 April, which prompted 1.6 million tweets using the hashtag #leadersdebate. This was followed by the BBC’s Question Time Election Leaders Special on 30 April, with just over 500,000 mentions of #BBCQT. Ed Milliband made a personal appearance on the list – the #milifandom hashtag saw almost 66,000 tweets.
Brandwatch collected the data from February until 5 May.