5 Ways Donald Trump Is Winning the Internets
(Carto DB)
It’s Donald Trump’s Internet, we just surf on it.
Ever since the perennial presidential candidate tossed his wispy comb-over into the ring, the Internet has been abuzz with tweets by and about the Donald, as well as countless news stories, videos, Facebook nods, and memes.
Just how thoroughly has the Trumpmeister dominated the Webbernets? Let’s look at the numbers.
We’ll start with a simple Google Trends head-to-head featuring the world’s two most famous Donalds, one of whom happens to be a duck.
Donald the candidate wins this mano-a-quacko showdown hands and wings down, thoroughly pummeling his equally pugnacious opponent by a factor of more than 12 to 1.
Strangely, The Donald is even more popular in Panama than he is in the US. Is it time to take the canal back yet?
Twitter, of course, is a bellweather of what people are talking about. This interactive map created by Carto DB shows the activity of various hashtags used on Twitter over the last 30 days, ranging from the favorable (#Trump2016) to the less than salutary (#Dumptrump), as well as some that could swing in either direction (#WhenTrumpIsElected).
The #TrumpYourCat meme dominated early; Twitter fans applied Trump-rugs to their unsuspecting felines and then share the photos more than 1000 times a day in mid July.
The hashtag #WhenTrumpIsElected peaked on July 26, occuring more than 10,000 times in a single day, then sloped gradually down. No doubt inspired by the candidate’s controversial observation about a certain Fox News reporter’s ability to spout blood from virtually any oriface, the tag #PeriodsAreNotAnInsult appeared suddenly on August 7 and was still climbing at press time.
Facebook shows Trump both soaring and plummeting, depending on what you pay attention to in this sparse-yet-confusing chart detailing his fans and Likes.
So is Trump up or down? The explanation, per Facebook:
“The graph you’re seeing is expressing a 20 percent gain in new Page likes over the past week, but now - day-to-day - he’s on a downward trend in terms of gaining new fans of this Page. He isn’t losing fans, he’s just not gaining as many as he was at the beginning of the week.”
That’s about as clear as a certain candidate’s policy statements.
Finally, there’s Spotify. The streaming music service features at least a dozen songs about Donald Trump, far outdistancing Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and all 238 other Republican hopefuls.
If the election were held today on Spotify, it’s pretty clear we’d all be singing a different tune.
Editor’s note: This article is in no way a brazen attempt to capitalize on all the attention Candidate Trump is receiving. That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.
Send email to Dan Tynan here or follow him on Twitter.
