While the pair have similar numbers of followers on Twitter and Facebook, Harris is a more frequent user and also creates more engagement through her updates.
Looking at Harris’ @KamalaHarris account and Mike Pence’s @Mike_Pence account, not the official VP or her senator account, the Democrat outperformed Pence throughout this year on Twitter—getting around three times the amount of engagement per post as him.
Harris also has 6 million followers compared to Pence’s 5.2 million.
As of October 5, Harris on average got 5,152 retweets per tweet compared to Pence’s 1,611. In terms of likes per tweet, she was at 26,341 for each post on average, compared to Pence’s 7,983, according to figures from Twitter analytics service Tweet Binder.
Harris’ figures grew sharply following her nomination in August. Up to that point, she averaged around 4,110 retweets per tweet and 19,056 likes per tweet.
After her nomination, those numbers have gone up to 8,364 and 48,815 per post on average—with each number more than doubling.
“Well, she certainly has focused her tweets on the Dem campaign and on supporting @JoeBiden,” Javier Abrego, CEO of Tweet Binder, told Newsweek.
“In fact, she mentioned Biden 56 times in her 1,197 tweets prior to the VP nomination but after being nominated 114 of her 388 tweets have mentioned @JoeBiden.”
On Facebook, again not looking at their official accounts as senator or vice president, the pair have a similar number of page likes. As of October 5, Harris has 1,589,058 compared to Pence’s 1,562,923, according to data from social media analytics platform NewsWhip.
In terms of interactions here, she was less far ahead per post—with 16,694 interactions on average per post compared to Pence’s 13,929.
However, due to posting nearly twice as much, 853 posts vs Pence’s 495, her total interactions were far higher. She had just more than 14 million as of October 5, while Pence had less than half of that at just shy of 7 million.
Factoring even Pence’s vice president Facebook page, he still lags, with the page having gotten 342,521 interactions this year and averaging 9,014 interactions per post.
More than half of Harris’ interactions this year have come after her being chosen as Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s running mate, with around 7.8 million since August 11. Since that date, Pence has had just more than 2.1 million interactions.
Newsweek has contacted Harris, Pence and their respective campaigns for comment.
Harris and Pence are due to go head-to-head in a debate Wednesday, with polling putting Harris ahead of the Republican in terms of who those surveyed said they would vote for.
Harris’ skill in rousing followers echoes the ability of Biden and his team, with the former vice president trailing president Donald Trump in terms of followers but outperforming him in terms of how much followers respond to his posts.
Biden’s team also used social media to great impact amid his debate with Trump, with his most popular Facebook post of the year being posted during this.