January 2022 Irish Political Social Media Stats
- Sinn Féin has more social media followers than any other party
- Leo Varadkar is the party leader with the most followers and is bigger than all parties.
- Micheál Martin gets leadership bump on Twitter
- Sinn Féin has most engagement on all platforms
- Sinn Féin has 18M YouTube video views
- Simon Harris is the king of TikTok
A social media analysis by Mulley Communications of the social media accounts of political parties has shown that Sinn Féin has the biggest following across all social media networks while Leo Varadkar is the party leader with the most followers on social media.
More detailed analysis:
Sinn Féin has the biggest Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube numbers.
Sinn Féin also has the most YouTube views with 18.7M views. However Leo Varadkar has more Facebook, Twitter and Instagram followers than all the political parties in Ireland and would be number one if he was his own party (make of that what you will)
..
| Party | TikTok | YouTube Subs | YT Views | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sinn Fein | 268.7k | 153k | 54.7k | 58.5k | 35.4k | 18.7M |
| Fine Gael | 43.4k | 55k | 8.7k | 0 | ** | 1.5M |
| Fianna Fáil | 42.9k | 50.3k | 8k | 5k | 1.3k | 2.2M |
| Labour Party | 59.8k | 54.5k | 35.9k | 841 | ** | 956k |
| People Before Profit | 17.8k | 21.5k | 9.2k | 10.7k | 1.9k | 238k |
| Green Party | 10.7k | 41.2k | 6.9k | 14 | 780 | 337k |
| Social Democrats | 42.9k | 29k | 3.6k | 2.7k | 878 | 255k |
** Labour and Fine Gael have not shown subscriber numbers for YouTube
Party Leaders:
Leo Varadkar is the party leader with the most followers on social media with over 720,000 followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Mary Lou McDonald has the next highest number of followers with 370,00 followers and Micheál Martin has 179k followers.
Mary Lou McDonald has the greatest amount of Facebook followers. To note: Facebook has the oldest demographic where almost the majority of people are 40 or over. Instagram and TikTok have much younger demographics.
Party Leader Social Media
While we couldn’t find TikTok accounts for any party leader, Simon Harris is King of TikTok with 89k followers https://www.tiktok.com/@simon_harristd and has more followers than the political parties.Breakdown by Social network
| Leader | TikTok | |||
| Leo Varadkar | 93.8k | 432k | 196.7k | 0 |
| Mary Lou McDonald | 173.2k | 167.1k | 30.9k | 0 |
| Micheál Martin | 25.8k | 152.9k | 18.1k | 0 |
| Eamon Ryan | 8.3k | 44,300 | 2.6k | 0 |
| Alan Kelly | 9.1k | 20.5k | 1.6k | 0 |
Micheal Martin saw a large bump in Twitter followers and a slight increase in Facebook followers since his election to Taoiseach:
|
Platform |
March 2020 |
April 2020 |
June 2020 |
May 2021 |
Jan 2022 |
|
|
19,400 |
19,700 |
19,961 |
25.3k |
25.8k |
|
|
46,100 |
54,100 |
59,100 |
138.3k |
152.9k |
Fianna Fáil didn’t see the same bump though
|
Fianna Fáil |
February 2020 |
April 2020 |
May 2020 |
May 2021 |
Jan 2022 |
|
|
38k |
38.9k |
39.3k |
41.3k |
42.9k |
|
|
38k |
42.2k |
43.4k |
49k |
50.3k |
|
|
4044 |
4628 |
4950 |
7.2k |
8k |
Engagement of Political Parties
As well as having the most followers on every social network, Sinn Fein is getting more engagement on their accounts and more engagement per post.
For Facebook
And for a fairer look, you can see how wide the gap is.
Average engagement per Facebook Post:
For Twitter
Twitter Engagement per post
Instagram
Instagram Engagement per post
Facebook stats for Irish Political Parties
| Sinn Fein | 268.7k |
|---|---|
| Labour Party | 59.8k |
| Fine Gael | 43.4k |
| Social Democrats | 42.9k |
| Fianna Fáil | 42.9k |
| People Before Profit | 17.8k |
| Green Party | 10.7k |
Twitter Stats for Irish Political Parties
| Party | |
|---|---|
| Sinn Fein | 153k |
| Fine Gael | 55k |
| Labour Party | 54.5k |
| Fianna Fáil | 50.3k |
| Green Party | 41.2k |
| Social Democrats | 29k |
| People Before Profit | 21.5k |
Instagram stats for Irish Political Parties
| Party | |
|---|---|
| Sinn Fein | 54.7k |
| Labour Party | 35.9k |
| People Before Profit | 9.2k |
| Fine Gael | 8.7k |
| Fianna Fáil | 8k |
| Green Party | 6.9k |
| Social Democrats | 3.6k |
TikTok stats for Irish Political Parties
| Party | TikTok |
|---|---|
| Sinn Fein | 58.5k |
| People Before Profit | 10.7k |
| Fianna Fáil | 5k |
| Social Democrats | 2.7k |
| Labour Party | 841 |
| Green Party | 14 |
| Fine Gael | 0 |