Hillary Clinton is crushing Jeb Bush on Facebook

[Commentary] It's presidential campaign launch season, and Facebook has tracked reactions to each candidate's official announcement since Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) became the first major candidate to jump into the race in March. The figures include all interactions (likes, posts, comments, shares), positive or negative. They're less an indication of how popular someone is than of how much interest there is in them, from either side.

With numbers now in for Jeb Bush's announcement, Hillary Clinton is far, far ahead: In the 24 hours surrounding Hillary Clinton's announcement on April 12, 4.7 million people produced 10.1 million interactions on Facebook. Sen Cruz is a very distant second, with 2.1 million people creating 5.5 million interactions, about half of Hillary's performance. The number of people liking, commenting, posting, and sharing in the 24 hours around an initial campaign announcement isn't likely to tell you much about who's going to win in the end. But it does tell you a little bit about the degree of public interest (again, positive or negative) at the campaign's outset. And it doesn't look like people care all too much about Jeb Bush.