About one-in-five adult Twitter users in the US follow Trump. More follow Obama.

President Donald Trump is a prolific Twitter user, using the social media site to promote his policies and criticize his opponents. But determining just how many Americans follow President Trump on the platform is more challenging than it may sound: Twitter, after all, is an international platform used by institutional accounts and bots as well as living, breathing people in the US. A new Pew Research Center analysis estimates that around one-in-five adult Twitter users in the US (19%) follow Trump’s personal account on the platform, @realDonaldTrump. President Trump’s immediate predecessor, Barack Obama (@BarackObama), is followed by 26% of US adult Twitter users.  The estimate is based on the 87% of adult Twitter users in the study who have public-facing accounts; it does not include the 13% of these users who have private accounts since it is not possible to independently verify which accounts those users follow.  About two-in-ten adult Twitter users with a public account (21%) follow at least one member of Congress; 17% of these users follow one or more Democratic members of Congress, and 8% follow one or more Republican members of Congress. That includes the official, campaign, or personal accounts of all members of the House and Senate.