You know that feeling you get when you are defriended on Facebook? That might be the feeling Mitt Romney is having this week, if he at all pays attention to his Facebook.
No, people are not logging on and hitting “unlike”—or at least they don’t appear to be—but the number of likes Romney is getting is apparently stalling. Also, according to Facebook and CNN, the number of negative mentions about Romney is increasing, while President Barack Obama is seeing more positive reactions.
Romney’s fall on social media comes during a hectic week for the Republican presidential candidate. Last week he pounced on Obama’s foreign policy, a move that was criticized by those on both sides of the political spectrum. This week, a secret video was released that showed Romney telling a group of people at a fundraiser that 47 percent of the country relied on government handouts and wouldn’t vote for him.
The fallout from those missteps is now being seen on Facebook, where Romney has gained 339,000 likes in the last seven days. Now that’s nothing to sneeze at, unless you consider that a few weeks ago, he gained more than 900,000 fans during a similar time period. And before that, in the run up to the Republican convention, a normal week saw an average of more than 500,000 new fans head toward Romney’s page.
That’s not to say Obama is gaining fans by leaps and bounds – in the last week he has gained about 215,000 fans – but he has 28 million fans already at hand. And Romney should have kept gaining likes with a convention boost that never really materialized, or if it did, died out quickly.
But perhaps some of the worst news for Romney was coming from the Facebook/CNN election insights tracker. Launched a few months ago, the election tracker looks at which candidate is getting more positive and negative reactions. In the last three days, Obama has seen a 3 percent increase in positive mentions. Meanwhile, Romney is getting negative attention and is being out-mentioned by his vice presidential pick, Paul Ryan.
And as Romney has the worst week ever, he’s not finding any sympathy from the Obama camp, which continues to hit the Republican hard over the “47 percent” comments. On Monday and Tuesday, the Obama camp posted five different images that referenced Romney’s remarks. Each one was getting hundreds of thousands of likes, and thousands of shares and comments.
Image via Barack Obama/Facebook