Who is PA's Newsom, Mayor of Twitterville?

 

The Pennsylvania media by and large has not focused on how our candidates for Governor and the United States Senate have used – or in some cases, not used -- social media in their political campaigns.  We shared with you news stories and articles from Maine (Kara Matuszewski, the news anchor who did the story is now a friend and follower – the power of social media!), Illinois, and just this past weekend, Texas and San Francisco.  What these stories have demonstrated is that politicians all over the country are dipping their toes into the social media ocean.  In many cases, they are swimming.  And in some cases they are cruising along on jet skis.

We have already discussed U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R) from Massachusetts (who, by the way, increased his number of followers this past week by almost 3,200 with a total of 205,101 followers).  In the “Twitterverse” Gavin Newsom, the Mayor of San Francisco, is now the fourth most followed politician in the United States, with 1.4 million Twitter followers.  Only President Obama, former Republican presidential candidate and current U.S Senator John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California governor have more followers.  And even though Schwarzenegger’s followers do not all live in California, in a state with 36.8 million people, he can reach a tremendous number of possible voters if he chooses to run for statewide office again.

In Pennsylvania this week, the race for Governor on the Democratic side saw the withdrawal of Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty.  Joe Hoeffel still leads with 1,431 Facebook Fans, updating his status eight times, but Dan Onorato has the largest number of followers on Twitter with a combined 593, though he has only tweeted once. Joe Hoeffel, on the other hand, had a total of 156 tweets to his combined 434 followers this past week.

On the Republican side for Governor, Rep. Sam Rohrer still maintains a lead over Attorney General Tom Corbett in Facebook fans 2,652 to 2,124 and in Twitter followers 293 to 248.  Both candidates are updating their status on Facebook frequently, but Corbett still has only tweeted once, while Rohrer continues to average 1.7 tweets per day.

In the race for U.S. Senate, Arlen Specter still leads Congressman Joe Sestak with 5,452 to 4,890 Facebook Fans, though over the past months Sestak has narrowed the lead by 301.  Both candidates updated their status six times, but Senator Specter’s page is filled with conversations from his fans (this could be a function of the underlying permissions on these fan pages).  Specter still leads in the number of Twitter followers, and both candidates tweeted eight times to their followers.  Pat Toomey still leads both of his Democratic counterparts with 8,479 total fans, but trails both of his potential rivals in Twitter followers.  He tweeted just seven times this past week, but updated his Facebook status 18 times.

Here are the current numbers as of 2/21/10.

 

  

Comments

[GrassrootsPA]

Great writeup!

LINKED ON GRASSROOTSPA.COM!!!!

[NathanBenefield]

Corbett has another Twitter Account: http://twitter.com/CorbettForGov that puts him slightly above Rohrer on that measure (but well below the Senate candidates)