The Liberal party’s Facebook videos were watched at triple the rate of Labor’s during the election campaign, analysis suggests.
Videos on the Liberal party’s central Facebook page were viewed 17,630,800 times, compared to Labor’s 5,940,500, despite both pages sharing the same amount of video, and Labor having more Facebook followers.
A single Facebook video from the Liberal party that painted Bill Shorten as awkward, goofy and strange garnered 1,100,000 views alone.
I am not joking. This was easily the most viewed official video I could find from the election campaign. https://t.co/FZZZuHXT0p
— Tim Beshara (@Tim_Beshara) June 3, 2019
The Liberals also dominated in the critical last 18 days of the election campaign. Liberal Facebook videos were watched four times more than Labor’s in the campaign’s final stretch, with 9,469,300 views to Labor’s 2,338,000.
The figures are surprising, given the two parties shared roughly the same number of videos: 188 for the Liberals and 181 for Labor. Labor’s page also has 299,954 followers, compared to 274,407 for the Liberals.
Labor’s Facebook videos struggled to crack 100,000 views. Only 11 of the 181 Labor videos published between 1 April and 18 May received more than 100,000 views.
The Liberals had 37 videos beyond the 100,000-view threshold. No Labor video received more than 500,000 views, while the Liberals had seven. The best-performing Labor video was a clip of Kristina Keneally poking fun at the electric car policy of the Coalition, which received 421,000 views.
The analysis does not include videos published by the accounts of individual Labor candidates or leaders. It also did not include videos on other mediums, like YouTube, or paid Facebook ads, which are difficult to measure in terms of reach. But, while by no means exhaustive, the analysis further cements the view that the Liberal party beat Labor on social media.
Prof Bela Stantic, a data expert with Griffith University, used social media engagement to accurately predict a Liberal win. He found Scott Morrison’s personal Facebook page was getting 25% more interactions than Bill Shorten’s, and that the Liberals’ main Facebook page had twice the engagement of its Labor counterpart.
