By Pascal Oparada
Social Media/Tech Reporter
Less than two weeks to the presidential poll, the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar is giving his opponents a run for their money on social media.
TheNiche Data Analysis Unit polled presidential candidates’ performance and reach across three Social media platforms.
Social media channels of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were monitored using a social media monitoring tool, CrowdTangle Intelligence.
The four presidential candidates whose social media presence, reach and mentions were monitored include President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC), his main challenger, Atiku Abubakar, of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Kingsley Moghalu of the Young Progressives Party (YPP) and Omoleye Sowore of African Action Congress (AAC).
Facebook Reach
Intelligence from Facebook shows that Atiku is leading the candidates by a total of 44 per cent reach to potential voters with 430,000 interactions.
He is followed by Sowore with a total 240,000 reach representing 24 per cent potential voters.
Buhari follows with 15 per cent with a total reach of 154,000 and Kingsley Moghalu has 15 per cent reach with 143,000.
Atiku has Facebook 46 per cent of the total Facebook reactions with a total of 256,000; generated 41 per cent of the comments with 65,000 and he had 42 per cent of the total shares with 108,000.
Sowore generated 16 per cent of Facebook reactions with 89,000 total. He trounced Atiku with 56 per cent of the total comments with 62,000 and 89,000 totalling 34 per cent shares.
Buhari on Facebook also had 16 per cent reactions with 89,000. He generated 13 per cent of the total comments with 21,000, 16 per cent shares with 43,000.
Moghalu’s Facebook reactions were 19 per cent with 108,000. The YPP candidate generated 6 per cent of the total comments at 9,900 and 9 per cent shares totalling 25,000.
The report was pulled from their verified Facebook pages.
Twitter Metrics
Atiku’s popularity on Twitter is paying off as he had a whopping total of 87 per cent reach with 1.37 million interactions as against Buhari’s 30 per cent with a total of 490,000. Moghalu followed with 5 per cent of 85,000 reaches and Sowore’s 4 per cent with 70,000.
Atiku generated 70 per cent likes with a total of 1,100,000, and 364,000 representing 67 per cent retweets.
Buhari is following with a total of 490,00 reach representing 31 per cent of 365,000 likes and 23 per cent with 125,000 retweets.
Moghalu had 3 per cent with 57,000 likes and 28,000 retweets and Sowore had 3 per cent with 47,000 likes with 4 per cent of 24,000 retweets.
Instagram reach
Surprisingly, on Instagram, Atiku still leads the pack with 43 per cent with a total of 557,000 reaches, 527 likes and 30.5,000 comments.
Buhari trails Atiku with 24 per cent with a total of 417,000 reaches, 392,000 likes and 24,100 comments.
Sowore, whose Instagram presence has been very impressive even before joining the race, had a total 18 per cent reach of 231,900, 219,000 likes and 12,700 comments.
Moghalu had 5 per cent with a total of 68,400 reaches, 65,000 likes and generated 3,400 comments on Instagram.
President Buhari seems to have drawn the other three candidates into his anti-corruption chatter as intelligence shows that the number one issue on the discussion by all the candidates is corruption followed by the economy, security, social investment and agriculture in that order.