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"President Barack Obama may be down in the ratings, but he still has a steady hold on social media popularity.\nIn December, Socialbakers \u2013 a social media analytics firm \u2013 tracked Facebook-page interactions of the eight key candidates from the Republican and Democratic parties to gauge changes in popularity and monitor fan engagement. Obama led the pack with the most overall interactions on the site, including comments, fan engagement and viral reach.\nPresident Barack Obama also has the most Facebook fans \u2013 a whopping 24 million, far more than the Republican candidates \u2014 but many were collected during the 2008 election period. His fan growth, however, experienced little improvement in December. Instead, former Penn. Senator Rick Santorum experienced the largest percentage growth last month (23%).\nSantorum still trails in Facebook popularity with only 40,000 fans. That's well behind former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney (1.2 million fans), Texas Congressman Ron Paul (670,000), Representative Michelle Bachmann (460,000), former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (223,000) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (179,000). Only former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has fewer Facebook fans (30,000) than Santorum. Ron Paul\u2019s engagement in December jumped 69%.\n\nSEE ALSO: Can Twitter Predict the Iowa Caucus? | Kelly Clarkson Album Sales Rise After Ron Paul Twitter Flap\nGOP hopeful Ron Paul has the highest viral reach (other than Obama). Viral reach corresponds to the amount of people that \u201Clike\u201D and comment on his page, multiplied by how many Facebook friends those users are connected to on the site. Michele Bachmann led in person-to-person interactions, which refers to how many people interacted with other Facebook fans\u2019 posts and comments.\nDuring one week of Socialbaker's tracking, 228,000 people talked about Obama on his Facebook page, while Ron Paul was the second most-chatted about politician on the site with nearly 60,000 mentions.\nNot surprisingly, Facebook is encouraging politicians to turn to the site to engage with fans and promote their campaigns.\n\"We're pleased that politicians at all levels of government, including at the highest level, are using Facebook to reach people in a direct, personal and simple way that was unimaginable a decade ago,\" Andrew Noyes, manager of public policy communications at Facebook, told Mashable. \"Socialbakers' analytics paint a compelling picture of how 2012 presidential candidates are actively embracing Facebook on the campaign trail to keep constituents informed about their activities and communicate about critical issues facing our country.\"\nDo you think popularity on social media sites will help predict presidential nominations? Let us know your thoughts in the comments."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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