The Twitter election

The next election, whenever it comes, will be the first in Canada in which Twitter will be a significant force. A story in Postmedia today flags that prospect.

So which Canadian politicos are best poised to plunge into the Twitter-campaign? Here, with the help of David Akin's handy political twits' directory, are the current follower counts for  11 politicians active on Twitter. (They may be the top 11, though I apologize if I've overlooked someone with a large following.) I imagine we'll see those numbers go up quickly if it does turn out to be a Twitter election.

• Prime Minister Stephen Harper: 100,636
• Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff:62,574
• NDP leader Jack Layton: 58,701
• Liberal MP Justin Trudeau: 54,946
• Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe: 45,123
• Liberal MP Denis Coderre: 23,644
• Industry Minister Tony Clement: 13,184
• Liberal MP Bob Rae: 6,900
• Heritage Minister James Moore: 5,382
• NDP MP Olivia Chow: 4,706
• Immigration Minister Jason Kenney: 4,496

Update: I should note that followers alone don't determine your Twitter influence. Much depends on what you're doing with your account, how many times your tweets are circulated beyond your followers, how many followers your followers have, and so on.  Several readers have already suggested that we analyze our politicos' Twitter capability using something like Klout or Twitfluence. 

Here as well (thanks @jeffjedras) is a site where Canadian political Twitter accounts have been ranked  for popularity and influence. Just click on this link.

 

Comments

[Cecil Palmerston]

Out of this list, James Moore and Jason Kenney have blocked me on Twitter for disagreeing with them. The media only praises Twitter use by politicians but never takes a critical view.

[Trevor]

The site you mention from @jeffjedras is a direct copy & paste of my sites list.
Politwitter is the premiere source for all things related to Canadian politics on Twitter and other social media.

The actual list of MPs on Twitter is available here and is updated often, in fact anyone can help update it.
http://politwitter.ca/page/canadian-politics-twitters/mp/house

You can click the table headers to sort the list by klout, followers or politwitter's own popularity. Popularity is measured by the number of times that MPs name or twitter handle is mentioned in the last couple months.

Also something you might find interesting is Politwitter's measurement of an MPs Twitter influence which is part of our "Follow Matrix" statistics.
http://politwitter.ca/page/statistics (scroll half-way down page)
"Influence is calculated by adding the total number of followers of the other MPs that follow an MP. This total is then divided by 100 and rounded to the nearest whole number."

[Cathy Payne]

I don't use twitter myself but when I saw there was a Twitfluence it made me wonder if this was someone's private line.