Winston, Facebook king

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has long known how to score a headline and new statistics show that has translated to social media.

Facebook has broken down anonymised data including an analysis of which politician’s page has had the most interactions — likes, comments, shares — in the 30 days leading into Budget week.

Peters is No 1, beating out Prime Minister Bill English (2), Labour leader Andrew Little (3), Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett (4) and Act leader David Seymour (5).

In terms of straight “likes”, English has 89,000, Peters 77,000 and Little close to 32,000.

Facebook also analysed which politician had the highest interaction rate (reactions relative to fan base) over the same period. That “per capita” measure opened the field to lesser known politicians.

Top was Defence Minister and Rodney MP Mark Mitchell, followed by National and Whangarei MP Dr Shane Reti, Green MP Eugenie Sage, National list MP Parmjeet Parmar and Labour and Napier MP Stuart Nash.

Facebook said 410,000 Kiwis had interacted with Budget-related topics, such as taxation and debt, in the four weeks. It ranked them as the Budget (35 per cent), economy (28), housing (28), education (27), social development (26) and immigration (22).