• Home
• »  National News
• » Mockus is world´s fastest growing politician on Facebook

Mockus is world´s fastest growing politician on Facebook

By Manuel Rueda, Editorial Director

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Green Party presidential candidate Antanas Mockus has become one of the most popular politicians on Facebook according to data revealed by facebakers.com.   

Facebakers ranks Facebook pages for companies, individuals and all sorts of organizations.

In the politicians’ category, US President Barack Obama ranks as the world´s most popular with more than 8,230,000 fans.  

At the time of writing, Mockus was ninth in the global list, with 517,325 fans, but his page is the world´s fastest growing according to the site, as it has gained 392,000 new fans over the past month and is currently gathering an impressive 9,000 fans a day.

Political analysts in Colombia say that the use of social networks has been crucial to Mockus´s campaign and to his steady rise in opinion polls as it has allowed the campaign team to reach young voters and replicate the campaign´s messages. 

Fans of the Mockus page can “donate” their Facebook status to the Mockus campaign, which daily places messages about the candidate on their personal page. 

                                                                                

The Mockus Facebook page is also being used to circulate information about campaign events like flash mobs and to keep fans informed about the candidate’s participation in presidential debates and other events.

Mockus has more Facebook fans than the rest of his opponents combined and his success on Facebook is paralleled by his success in the polls.

According to an April 30th poll by Datexco, Mockus leads the pack of five presidential candidates with 38% of voting intent, while former Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos comes in second with 26%.  

The most recent poll by Ipsos Napoleon Franco meanwhile gives Mockus 38% of voting intent and Santos 29%. 

The latest poll by Gallup which was also released in the last week of April however, places Santos in the lead with 34.2% of voting intent with Mockus following closely behind at 31.6%. 

Santos has around 100,800 fans on Facebook, a small number compared to Mockus´ 517,000.  But the former defence minister belongs to Colombia´s largest party –the U party- he is well connected with the business community and his allies command well established client list networks that are used to drum up support in poor neighbourhoods.

Despite Mockus´ appeal to young voters and independents and his astounding growth on Facebook, the Colombian election is still too close to call.