Republican politicians have gained Twitter followers in the hundreds of thousands while Democrats saw plummeting followers after billionaire and Tesla founder Elon Musk took over the social media platform, according to The Washington Post.
Republicans gained 8,000 followers on average while Democrats lost 4,000 in the weeks after the takeover, according to the Post’s analysis of ProPublica data. The shift began abruptly the week of Musk’s Oct. 27 Twitter takeover; accounts analyzed by the Post had been fairly stagnant from Sept. 30 to Oct. 24.
Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan both gained more than 300,000 followers in the three weeks after the Musk takeover, while Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff and Democratic Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders all lost about 100,000, according to the Post.
The mass deletion of bot accounts could account for the trend, as could a possible exodus of left-leaning Twitter users from the platform or the entry of new conservatives, according to the Post, although not all followers of politicians are supporters.
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