Hard-line opposition candidate for Colombia’s 2014-2018 presidency, Oscar Zuluaga, has quadrupled his support base on social media in the two months leading up to coming Sunday’s election.
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On March 15, exactly two months before the election, Zuluaga had 112,000 fans on Facebook. By Monday morning, this had grown to 431,000 fans.
Over the past five days alone, Zuluaga’s support base on Facebook increased with 59,000 fans.
The hard-liner’s campaign has been relatively active, posting generally more than 10 propaganda messages per day.
The opposition candidate proved just as successful on Twitter where he went from 84,000 to 313,000 in the same period.
Zuluaga’s opponent, incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos, who in March had already accumulated 679,000 Facebook likes and 2.5 million followers on Twitter was also able to further increase his dominance on social media, but with significantly less force than his opponent.
The president’s Facebook fan base grew 10% while his number of followers on Twitter grew 13%.
In the week leading up to Sunday’s election, Both candidates are impeded from organizing political meetings but are free to continue rallying support on traditional media and internet.
According to pollsters, both candidates were tied as they entered the last week before of the second round election.