Sinn Féin has more followers than all other Irish parties combined, and is dominant on all platforms, according to new research.
Sinn Féin leads the way with 925,900 followers, far ahead of People Before Profit in second place, with 170,200 followers.
The party also has more followers than all the other parties combined (769,910).
The research from Mulley Communications also highlighted Sinn Féin's growth. The current figure of 925,900 is a huge jump from the 421,600 followers the party had in 2020.
It is not a surprise as Sinn Féin has honed its social media strategy in the last few years, and the party's online presence was seen as a big factor in its success in the 2020 general election.
The Social Democrats also experienced significant growth, with a 233.26 per cent growth rate between 2022 and 2024. They now have 44,080 followers.
Government parties Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have seen "moderate growth compared to others". However, the research notes improvements on TikTok for Fine Gael, "which could indicate an evolving strategy to capture a younger demographic".
Sinn Féin is the most followed party on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Threads.
Here is the list of the combined reach of parties across all platforms:
- Sinn Féin: 925,900
- People Before Profit: 170,200
- Social Democrats: 146,900
- Labour Party: 141,700
- Fine Gael: 125,006
- Fianna Fáil: 115,983
- Green Party: 70,121
Here is the list of growth levels for the parties between 2022 and 2024:
- Social Democrats: 233.26 per cent
- Sinn Féin: 83.60 per cent
- People Before Profit: 73.32 per cent
- Fine Gael: 13.62 per cent
- Labour Party: 12.19 per cent
- Fianna Fáil: 11.92 per cent
- Green Party: 3.33 per cent
When it comes to politicians, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar (788,600 followers) and incoming Taoiseach Simon Harris (542,700 followers) boast the most followers. Another potential future taoiseach, Mary Lou McDonald (446,000 followers) is in third.
Reflecting the party numbers, People Before Profit's Richard Boyd Barrett comes in fourth with 398,200 followers.
Mr Body Barrett had notable growth figures along with his party colleague Paul Murphy who demonstrated "substantial growth".
On TikTok, Mr Murphy's followers grew from 381 to 52,700.
While his political opponents have sought to criticise Simon Harris with the label 'TikTok Taoiseach', he probably won't mind as it allows him to reach a wide and young audience.
He has 95,100 TikTok followers and 172,000 Instagram followers.
His TikTok following surpasses the combined followers of all other political parties (excluding Sinn Féin) on the platform, which amounts to 89,360.
These are the most followed politicians in Ireland:
- Leo Varadkar: 788,600 followers
- Simon Harris: 542,700 followers
- Mary Lou McDonald: 446,000 followers
- Richard Boyd Barrett: 398,200 followers
- Micheál Martin: 288,900 followers
- Paul Murphy: 199,500 followers
- Holly Cairns: 133,447 followers
- Eamon Ryan: 69,080 followers
- Ivana Bacik: 41,550 followers
- Brid Smith: 37,950 followers
Damien Mulley of Mulley Communications said: "With upcoming local, European and general elections, all parties are ready to use social media to get their message out on platforms from the now very old Facebook, to the trendy Tiktok to the brand new Threads from Meta. Having a presence and using it strategically is another matter.
"A big difference we've noticed from the last general election and the last few years is the rapid move away from text and images on social media to video first and, with it, a significant rise in direct to camera pieces backed up with captions. It can be steep learning curve with some politicians being awkward Dad trying to have a chat while others are your cool older sister back from uni."
By James Cox
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