President Obama’s reelection campaign has a sizable edge over the campaign of Republican rival Mitt Romney when it comes to their digital efforts. That’s according to a new study from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The study, which focused on the level of content both campaigns have posted to their respective websites and social media channels, found that Obama’s campaign posted four times as much digital content as the Romney campaign. Obama is also active on nearly twice as many platforms.
The data comes from a Pew analysis of the websites and social media channels of both campaigns from June 4-17.
The biggest difference: the amount of activity on Twitter. On average, the Romney camp posted one tweet a day, compared to 29 from the Obama campaign.
Pew also found that Romney’s campaign is much more likely to talk about Obama on its online channels than the president is to talk about Romney on his. Content targeting Obama accounts for about a third of what the Republican’s campaign has posted online, according to Pew.
One thing both campaigns are lacking: personal interaction with supporters on their social media channels, particularly on Twitter.
“Rarely did either candidate reply to, comment on, or ‘retweet’ something from a citizen-or anyone else outside the campaign,” according to the study. “On Twitter, 3% of the 404 Obama campaign tweets studied during the June period were retweets of citizen posts. Romney’s campaign produced just a single retweet during these two weeks-repeating something from his son Josh.”
Some other findings from the Pew study:
Across all platforms Pew reviewed over the two week period, the Obama campaign published a total of 614 posts, while Romney’s campaign posted 168.
Nearly a quarter of all posts from the Romney campaign were focused on the economy, versus just 19 percent of posts from the Obama campaign. And the Romney campaign specifically highlighted “jobs” nearly twice as often as Obama.
While much of the content was focused on the economy, it was the hot-button issues that generated the most interest. On average, Obama’s economic messages generated an average of 361 “shares or retweets” per post. The campaign’s posts about immigration resulted in more than four times that amount.