Politics

Jeremy Corbyn has reached nearly 650k people online – and reached beyond his base


Nearly 650,000 people have interacted with the Labour leader’s posts in this campaign.

And 173,000 are newcomers to Labour ’s social media presence – which the party claims shows Labour has been able to reach out beyond its core base.

“Labour have changed up their approach this election, they are far more combative and have energised a difference segment of the electorate to say 2015 or even 2017,” said Tristan Hotham, a social media researcher at the University of Bath, who has studied the parties’ social media campaigning.

Labour sources claim it has been a successful digital campaign for the party this year: Labour’s eight-strong digital team has five times the number of video views on Twitter , and 67% more shares of content on Facebook , than it did in the 2017 election.

The most popular video the Labour Party has produced was Rob Delaney’s impassioned plea for the National Health Service (NHS), which has been seen by 13.3 million people. 


Part of that popularity was driven by paid promotion of the video, says Hotham. He estimates the party spent up to £35,000 promoting the American actor’s video on Facebook so it was seen 2.5 million times.

“They have been kickstarting what more naturally occurred in 2017,” said Hotham, who estimates that the party has doubled spending on Facebook ad campaigns compared to 2017.

Who Targets Me, which has been tracking social media posts during the election campaign, has tracked the amount each party has to spend per impression for their online adverts on Facebook. 

Labour and Jeremy Corbyn have  paid twice the amount  other major political pages to promote their adverts in the last month. 


This comes as  New Scientist reported  that political campaigns in the United States have to pay up to three times as much to promote adverts on Facebook to people with opposing viewpoints.

In all, videos on Jeremy Corbyn’s personal Facebook page have been seen nearly 70 million times – more than the 65 million views recorded in the longer 2017 general election campaign.

The Labour leader’s Facebook page is four times most influential than his party’s official Facebook presence, which has posted videos seen 17 million times and shared 600,000 times.

“The fact that on an old stalwart like Facebook, that Labour can pull in new audiences shows a marked shift in the politics of the Facebook audience,” said Hotham.

Hotham did point out that interactions includes comments and interactions, which can be negative as well as positive.

While the party leaders criss-crossed the country in the final day of campaigning before polling stations open, the battle was being waged on social media. 

Labour’s official Facebook page has earned more than half of the interactions across all political party pages on Wednesday, while the Tories have driven a third of all interactions.

But on Instagram , the Conservatives were in the lead, with 65 percent of interactions the day before the election – twice the number that Labour had.

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General election 2019

When it comes to the party leaders, Corbyn still leads the way. The Labour leader saw 275,000 interactions on 20 Facebook posts on Wednesday, compared to 97,000 on Boris Johnson ’s 29 posts.

On Instagram, Corbyn posted three times as many posts the day before the election, and saw four times as many interactions as Boris Johnson.





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