Who's winning the Facebook primary?
In the week leading up to the Iowa caucuses, Donald Trump has dominated the conversation in Iowa and across the U.S.
The social media site released data saying 181,300 Iowans have talked about Trump in the last seven days and there have been 727,800 interactions around his candidacy - likes, comments, posts and shares about the businessman.
The candidate ginning up the second-most chatter is Ted Cruz, though just 48,000 Iowans have discussed him and there have been 155,300 interactions related to his campaign. The most recent poll of Iowa GOP caucus-goers suggests a much tighter race than the one on Facebook.
Next up is Marco Rubio with 21,500 unique mentions and 48,400 interactions, and neurosurgeon Ben Carson with 20,500 unique mentions but more interactions than Rubio -- 68,700.
There are between 10,000 and 11,500 people talking about Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee and Carly FIorina, and less than 7,500 talking about Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, Chris Christie and John Kasich. Jim Gilmore has less than 1,000 Iowans talking about him on Facebook.
Carson does edge out Rubio nationally, with 951,300 people discussing his campaign and 3.1 million interactions. But Trump dominates nationally as well, with 10.6 million people talking about his candidacy across 45.8 million interactions in the last seven days. Cruz also comes in second nationally, with 2.5 million unique people talking about his campaign and 9 million interactions.
Facebook's candidate chatter tracking since early November shows Trump has consistently dominated his rivals, seeing about 60,000 more people discuss his candidacy in mid-December (around the time he called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S.) and late January (when he decided to skip the last Republican debate because he felt he treated unfairly by Fox News).
The conversation has been far more even between the top two Democratic candidates, and polls similarly suggest the race is close. Over the past week, 99,500 people in Iowa have discussed Hillary Clinton on Facebook across 366,400 interactions. But Bernie Sanders was in hot pursuit with 86,900 unique people discussing him in 335,600 interactions.
Chatter about Martin O'Malley reflected his low poll standings, with just 4,400 Iowans discussing him on Facebook in 9,700 interactions.
Nationally, the story is similar: 5.2 million people talked about Clinton in the last week across 20.4 million interactions while 4.5 million discussed Sanders in 17.8 million interactions. Just 109,000 people talked about O'Malley, and he was the subject of 206,000 interactions, approximately.
Since early November, Clinton has usually kept a slight edge over Sanders in Facebook chatter in Iowa. Both have seen the number of people discussing them steadily from a few thousand in November and December to 15,000 and in the new year.
The top issues discussed by Iowans cross both Democratic and Republican lines: They've been discussing Wall Street and financial regulation, crime and criminal justice, abortion, taxes and the Affordable Care Act.
The national story has been different. There people have talked about religion, racism and discrimination, jobs, Wall Street and financial regulation, and Benghazi.