Here’s who would be president if Facebook likes counted as votes

Kellen Beck
Updated
Fivefacebookheader
Fivefacebookheader

What if instead of going out to cast our votes at the polls, the U.S. chose its presidential primary winners with Facebook likes? In that case, Ben Carson would be up against Bernie Sanders come November. And, assuming each candidate's proportion of likes remained the same, Carson would win it all.

FiveThirtyEight published an interactive map showing which presidential primary candidates have the most Facebook likes in each county in the U.S. Across the entire country, Carson garnered 26% of all Facebook likes for presidential candidates, Sanders and Donald Trump received 23% of likes, Ted Cruz hit 12% and Hillary Clinton reached 8%.

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While it may not be an accurate representation of who will be the 45th president of the U.S., the interactive map includes some interesting statistics. Carson leads 27 states and was the top Republican candidate in 36 states, while Sanders lead 18 states but topped the Democrats in all 50 states. Trump only led in 5 states and was the top Republican candidate in 14.

Those three candidates dominated the top three of almost every state. Clinton only made it into third place in two states, New York and Massachusetts, while Cruz took third in six states and second in Texas. The most impressive lead was Sanders in his home state of Vermont with 77% of likes.

Contrary to the recent caucus in Iowa, Sanders took the lead with 23% of Facebook likes, well ahead of Clinton’s 9%, while Trump took second with 22% of likes.

You can look at each county’s breakdown to see how your hometown stacks up against your state and country, as well as check out major cities.

Don't take this information as any indication of how the results will pan out for 2016's presidential election. Just because someone liked a politician's Facebook page does not mean that they will vote for them in the election, or will even vote at all. There is also the issue of age — the data do not exclude people who are not of voting age, and Facebook tends to skew toward a younger audience, and so does the appeal of some candidates.

FiveThrityEight collected its data from Facebook this month based on the number of likes on the politicians' verified pages. Users who liked multiple candidates gave likes to each, and candidates with multiple verified pages did not receive double likes for users that liked both.