Sunday 24 July 2016

How unpopular is Jeremy Corbyn?


I've been working myself up reading press stories about how unpopular Jeremy Corbyn is - mixed up with journalists recycling a lot of lies about him too.

So I've done a bit of unscientific research of my own; at least it's not much more unscientific than surveying 800 people and pretending that that's a good sample of opinion.

I took a look at 'Facebook'.

It isn't scientific because Facebook 'Likes' aren't really a guide to popularity; you might 'like' someone you don't really like but you want to know what they are doing.

But these days it's a kind of guide.

Theresa May, the new Prime Minister, has 220, 511 likes. I would have said that was quite a lot for such an unpleasant, person.

Then I looked at Boris Johnson, the right wing clown. He has 552,786 'likes' on his page. No wonder she made him Foreign secretary - it's more than twice as many.

Then again, Sadiq Khan the new mayor of London is very popular - he is being promoted as a possible alternative Labour leader to Jeremy Corbyn. The press loves him and as a result he has 558,489 'likes' on his page.

Then I took a look at some other Labour politicians.

I've been having a go at Angela Eagle recently - she's the M.P. who spent two weeks threatening to stand for leader "Tomorrow, unless Jeremy stands down".

When she eventually stood her campaign survived for a few days before she gave up.

She has 18, 772 likes.

Hmmmmmmh!

I wasted a lot of time trying to find Owen Smith's likes; he has a Facebook presence but I couldn't for the life of me find a page with likes on it. I don't actually think he's using Facebook but Robyn found a page of his for me with 6437 'likes'.

I'm dubious about that, I would expect him to have more and don't want to put too much emphasis on that. Lots of people don't want the bother of having a real, interactive, internet identity.

So then I took a look at the 'Jeremy Corbyn for PM' page. That's not his page, it's unofficial, but it still has 216,979 'likes'.

The official Jeremy Corbyn page has 771, 903 'likes'.

Now, as I said at the beginning, 'likes' do not really mean that people actually like you but it's a guide to interest in people.

I also have to warn you that the numbers change from minute to minute as people 'like' or 'dislike' pages. If you do a check now, the figures will be different from last night when I checked these out.

But Corbyn is way out there.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

No comments:

Post a Comment