Collins’ Facebook Page: Curious

Chris Collins, like any semi-competent politician, has a Facebook fan page for his run to represent NY-27 in Congress. It has about 3,500 likes, and 6 people talking about it. 

3,530 is a big number. After all, the Erie County Republican Committee’s Facebook page has only 615 likes, with “11 people talking” about it. 

Where did all of Collins’ likes come from? Could he be using a service to manipulate the number? Did he transfer over his likes from when he was County Executive? The guy who beat him last year has only about 800 likes. 

It’s unclear when Collins set up this Facebook page – it says “joined Facebook” on April 26th, but there’s a mis-dated entry of April 2011 thanking people for circulating petitions for his Congressional run. 

So, let’s say the Collins for Congress fan page was created sometime in mid-April 2012. Between May 12 and June 12, 2012 – as the campaign against David Bellavia has heated up – only 114 people “liked” Collins’ page. What this means is that he accumulated 3,416 likes between mid-April and mid-May.  The page itself features only about 20 posts, 8 of which were put up in April.  What was so compelling that attracted over 3,000 in April? 

April 19, 2011 (a letter dated April 19, 2012) 1 post
April 26, 2012 5 posts
April 29, 2012 1 post
April 30, 2012 1 post
May 2, 2012    1 post
May 4, 2012    1 post
May 8, 2012    1 post
June 1, 2012    3 posts
June 2, 2012    1 post
June 12, 2012  3 posts

The trajectory of “likes” on the page also fits a particular pattern – a low one.  

 

 Where did the other 3,000+ likes come from, exactly?