Biden’s Twitter following soars as large numbers ditch Trump after election defeat

Incoming president has gained about 1.15m followers while Trump’s has consistently fallen since 17 November

Analysis of their social media profiles shows the following of US president-elect Joe Biden has skyrocketed in recent weeks, while departing president Donald Trump’s numbers have seen a steady and sustained decline since shortly after the declaration of election results.

Mr Biden has added about 1.15 million followers to take him to a total of more than 20 million since the 3 November vote.

And while his overall following remains at a much higher level, Mr Trump has lost about 134,000 followers to bring his total down to about 88.8 million, according to the website Factbase which tracks the president’s Twitter activity. 

Factbase first observed a trend of reducing Trump followers on 17 November, and since then his official handle has seen a consecutive daily decline over the course of at least 11 days.  

On Sunday, CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter tweeted: “Surely not the most important metric in the world, but still worth noting: For the first time since 2015, Trump consistently losing followers on here. @FactbaseFeed has measured small declines for 11 days in a row.”

Though the president has recorded a decrease in the number of followers from one day to the next on numerous occasions since he occupied the Oval Office, it is the first time that any such dip has lasted for more than a week since at least January 2017.  

Fact-checking site Snopes noted that there have been four instances when Mr Trump’s Twitter account “measured a follower count less than the day prior two days in a row.” These included July 2018, October 2018, November 2018 and mid-November 2020.  

“But in all of those cases, on the third day, the quick trend reversed and showed a net gain,” said the report.  

Snopes said Mr Trump has now recorded net losses in Twitter followers for 13 consecutive days.  

Newsweek reported last week, that the exodus of followers from Mr Trump’s account could also be attributed to Twitter’s crackdown on bots – accounts not run by humans.  

But the shrinking support base for Mr Trump also coincides with a project called “UnfollowThePres”, spearheaded by Andrew Lazar. The movement is aimed at encouraging the public to ask Twitter to flag tweets from the president that spread misinformation.  

Since the declaration of the presidential results, Mr Trump has been using his Twitter profile to spread repeated and unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.