Crawford leads social media VP race
If the People’s National Party (PNP) vice-presidential race were to be conducted on social media, chances are Damion Crawford would come out on top. The dreadlocked Crawford is the most popular candidate on Twitter and Instagram.
Approximately 3,000 delegates are eligible to vote in tomorrow’s election. Six persons — Crawford, Dr Angela Brown Burke, Dr Fenton Ferguson, Dr Wykeham McNeill, Mikael Phillips and Phillip Paulwell — are seeking the four spots.
Popular political blogger Kamla Forbes believes that if the race was strictly a social media one, Crawford would be the winner because he has a very heavy presence there.
“About 30 to 40 per cent of the voters use social media. Social media gives us the opportunity to touch base with the delegates quicker. They still have to do their walking and meeting people, however, with social media, once you identify who the delegates are, the message can be spread easily and quickly,” she said.
Even though she acknowledges that social media plays a very important part in the process, she insists that there needs to be a balance.
“We have to temper it. Social media plays a role, but it does not play as big a role as it plays in the US, for example. PNP as a party, has a lot of elderly delegates who are not even on social media. When you try to do a survey, probably 30 per cent of the delegates are on social media, so it’s not that many. So, there needs to be a balance,” she said.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Lisa Hanna, opposition member of parliament are the most popular politicians on social media.
Holness has more than 101,000 Instagram followers and in excess of 56,600 Twitter followers.
On Instagram, Hanna has more than 237,000 followers, while she has just a little more than 16,900 plus followers on Twitter. TWITTER: Damion Crawford: @DamionCrawford — 16.8K Wykeham McNeill: @WestWestMP — 274 Angela Brown Burke: @brownburke — 2,486 Fenton Ferguson: @realdocferguson — 138 Mikael Phillips: @MikaelPhillips — 4,024 Phillip Paulwell: @PaulwellPhillip — 104 INSTAGRAM: Damion Crawford: @DamionCrawford — 6,926 Wykeham McNeill: @WestWestMP — 1,466 Angela Brown Burke: @brownburke — 1,698 Fenton Ferguson: @fentonferguson — 321 Mikael Phillips: @phillipsmikael — 1,466 Phillip Paulwell: @PaulwellPhillip — 962