By Matt Rooney
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It’s no secret that social media is now lapping print newspapers in terms of where Americans get their news, Save Jerseyans. Pew recently discovered that 55% of Americans use social media at a significant interval to get their news, and of that majority roughly 52% get their social media-hosted news from Facebook. YouTube (28%), Twitter (17%), Instagram (14%) LinkedIn (8%), Reddit (8%) and Snapchat (8%) all lag far behind Zuckerberg’s signature creation.
How well do Republicans in New Jersey use Facebook?
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We’re going to take an in-depth look in the “off season” (over the next few months). To kick things off, here’s the “likes” accumulated for each of the NJGOP’s 15 (as of December 5th, when Mike Testa is sworn in) state senators.
The 15 legislators have under 34,000 likes between them. 5 have less than 1,000 Facebook fans. For perspective, our own Save Jersey page currently boasts 20,554 likes and the NJGOP page has 85,312. The caucus’s small overall Facebook audience means it’s at the mercy of the hostile Mainstream Media to get its message out (independent of often limited campaign budgets come election time).
The list:
- Chris Brown (R-2) – 9,385
- Mike Testa, Jr. (R-1) – 4,084*
- Tom Kean Jr. (R-21) – 3,887
- Kip Bateman (R-16) – 2,077
- Steven Oroho (R-24) – 1,994
- Anthony Bucco (R-25) – 1,956
- Mike Doherty (R-23) – 1,922
- Declan O’Scanlon (R-13) – 1,875
- Kristin Corrado (R-40) – 1,517
- Joe Pennacchio (R-26) – 1,238
- Chris Connors (R-9) – 968**
- Bob Singer (R-30) – 939
- Gerald Cardinale (R-39) – 841
- Sam Thompson (R-12) – 684
- Jim Holzapfel (R-10) – 381
*Testa doesn’t take office until 12/05/2019.
**Connors shares a page with his LD9 GOP Assembly district mates.
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