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How did Facebook "like" Scott Walker after he announced?

Facebook users welcomed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker into the presidential race Monday with 1,578,000 "likes, posts, comments and shares from 679,000 people n the 24-hour period between midnight July 13 and midnight July 14, all related to his announcement.

This is a substantial bump compared to the last 90 days. Conversation about Walker had been generating an average of about 66,000 unique people per day.

The top states talking about Walker were Wisconsin, Minnesota, D.C., Illinois and Iowa, and in the week leading up to his announcement, the topics most associated with Walker were economic equality and mobility, money in politics and education.

Walker's numbers compare with Ben Carson, who also had 1.5 million interactions.

Donald Trump takes the lead among Republicans on interactions, with 6.4 million interactions in the 24-hour period after his announcement earlier this month. Ted Cruz comes in second, with 5.5 million interactions on Facebook.

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton dominates everyone in the 2016 race when it comes to Facebook engagement: her April debut generated 10.1 million interactions from 4.7 million people.

The numbers, of course, provide only one data point - and it's one that doesn't indicate whether the Facebook interactions were positive or negative, and there is no concrete evidence that social media stardom will translate into votes.

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