Five years ago I published an article declaring that 2014 was going to be South Africa’s first Digital Elections.
This was an insight gathered by realising that a political upstart named Julius Malema had a larger following on Twitter than the most visible technologically capable politician and then leader of the DA Helen Zille.
As I review the data from the April 18, 2014 to April 29, 2019, here are the results:
Leader size on Twitter:
#1 Julius Malema: 2 390 000 followers from 439 902
#2 Mmusi Maimane: 1 100 000 followers from 32 900
#3 Cyril Ramaphosa: 509 000 followers from 0
Leader growth on Twitter:
#1 Mmusi Maimane: 3,343% increase over 5 years (from 32 900 to 1 100 000 followers)
#2 Cyril Ramaphosa: 51% increase over 10 months, as no data from 2014 (from 248 000 to 509 000 followers)
#3 Julius Malema: 81.59% increase over 5 years (from 439 902 to 1 380 000 followers)
Parties' growth on Twitter:
#1 EFF: 94.42%
#2 DA: 86.60%
#3 ANC: 82.54%
vs Twitter Growth of 39.7%
Party growth on Facebook:
#1 DA: 83.67%
#2 EFF: 80.16%
#3 ANC: 76.61%
vs Facebook growth of 57.0%
The Top 3 parties grew an average of 88.2% increase whereas Twitter only grew 39.7% (October 2018). Top 3 parties grew an average of 80.15% whereas Facebook grew 57% (October 2018).
It is clear that politics is as important to the politicians as it is to the platforms in which they publish their content on.
On Twitter when you combine the parties and their leadership followings it is clear whom has the most reach of the parties and their leaders.
Parties & leaders combined on Twitter:
EFF + Julius Malema combined: 3.128m
DA + Mmusi Maimane combined: 1.651m
ANC + Cyril Ramaphosa combined: 1.158m
Based on the historic 5 year growth, this is the forecasted growth to the next elections in May 2024:
Leaders' size on Twitter:
#1 Julius Malema: 4.340m followers
#2 Cyril Ramaphosa: 4.212m followers
#3 Mmusi Maimane: 2.167m followers
Parties on Twitter:
#1 EFF: 1.430m followers
#2 ANC: 1.184m followers
#3 DA: 1.028m followers
Parties on Facebook:
#1 DA: 978,000 likes
#2 ANC: 935 000 likes
#3 EFF: 744 000 likes
* Will Green is the CEO of Co.lab. Follow him on Twitter: @willjngreen
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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