New information about Britain’s political parties and their social media platforms has revealed a significant surge for the UK Independence Party, and in the case of Facebook ‘Likes’, more than five times all of the other major parties combined.
The UK General Election 2015 blog has been following all of Britain’s political parties on Twitter and Facebook, and noted that while the Labour Party gained 4,016 followers, and the Conservatives gained 2,005 followers, UKIP gained 6,563 Twitter followers.
While the National Health Action Party, which supports increased funding for the National Health Service, appears to be gaining in popularity, this is due to a Twitter bot that follows and unfollows Twitter users in order to trick them into following back. This is evident through the Twitter account’s high ‘following’ count, compared to its ‘follower’ count.
In terms of Facebook fans, UKIP outperformed all the mainstream political parties put together by a factor of five.
The analysis reveals that UKIP added 41,000 Facebook followers over the past month, while the other major parties lumped together only managed to add 8,000 between them.
It is thought that UKIP is spending more time and money on its Facebook following, seeking to bolster more traditional campaigning methods with a large online presence.
The surprise grower on Facebook is the Green Party, which has been advertising towards environmentally conscious people and disaffected socialists on Facebook. The party has also been highly active on the social network, whereas other parties besides UKIP tend to post just one update per day.
Michael Heaver, who is a UKIP press officer and also their social media guru told Breitbart London why he thought UKIP was gaining such traction online. He said: “It is a phenomenal rate of growth that reflects the enthusiasm on the ground for UKIP’s European Election campaign.”
Yesterday on the BBC Daily Politics, Breitbart London‘s Executive Editor James Delingpole reflected on how the new media is helping conservatives and libertarians more than it is the political left.
He said: “The internet… is the greatest breakthrough for freedom since Guttenberg invented the printing press… the old media is dying on its feet.”
“[We] circumvent the way the Gramscite left has occupied the universities, the schools, the newspapers – right wingers can get around that. Climategate would never have broken if it had not been for the internet”.
The UK General Election 2015 blog also revealed last month how UKIP’s website is currently the most popular of all political parties in Britain. UKIP was ranked the 1,813th most read website in Britain. The British National Party’s was 4,765th, with the LibDems on 6,970.
The Labour Party’s was ranked 9,551 while the Conservative Party achieved just 9,944. The SNP and the Greens were ranked 13,839 and 18,819 respectively.
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