#GE16 Was Tweeted Over 15,000 Times On Day One Of The General Election

By @TheMarkDalton

Just in case you may have missed it yesterday, we are going to the polls on Friday 26th February for the general election. After the announcement yesterday #GE16 was tweeted over 15,000 times with over 6,000 Twitter accounts tweeting about #GE16.

87% of people were tweeting in Ireland, 4% in UK, 4% in US and the remaining 5% in other regions. Sinn Fein, Bloomberg Business, Waterford Whispers and President Higgins received the most retweets.

#GE16 was tweeted a total of 15,088 times during the first 12 hours after the announcement of a General Election was made by Taoiseach Enda Kenny on Twitter according to PR360’s #GE16 social tracker.

The PR360 #GE16 social tracker is designed to analyse the digital footprint of the General Election and will report for the duration of the election campaign.

Non-traditional media sources including Waterford Whispers, Paddy Power, Joe.ie and LovinDublin all emerged as unlikely ‘influential’ voices on Day One of the election. These four twitter accounts were listed within the top ten influential voices, alongside more traditional media titles including The Irish Times, RTE, Today FM, RTE’s Morning Ireland and Bloomberg.

Enda Kenny’s above tweet which announced the dissolution of the Dail was retweeted 630 times with 287 likes at the time of going to write this piece. Dan Pender, Managing director of PR360 said that more so than ever, canvassing online will play a greater role in the general election.

“With over 40% of people now accessing news online, and considering the sharp rise in the use of various social sites to share stories, opinion and views, our candidates will be seeking as many ‘likes’ as votes this year. It will be fascinating to watch what new, novel and different voices emerge online and offline between now and February 26.”

PR360 put together the following infographic from they day one data of #GE16.