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Biden draws more online engagement as election draws near

Data: Conviva; Chart: Axios Visuals

New data from media intelligence company Conviva finds that Joe Biden has begun to draw more engagement per post on Twitter than President Trump.

  • There's been a steady increase by Biden in the monthly averages of engagements per post, average engagements per video, and follower adds since the beginning of the year.
  • This past month, Biden passed Trump in all three metrics. (The Conviva data only includes retweets and likes, not quote tweets.)

The big picture: Biden is also closing the gap on social media engagement on news stories about the candidates, according to data from NewsWhip. While Trump stories generated 28 million more interactions last week, that gap is the smallest of the campaign.

  • On TV, Biden not only surpassed Trump in ratings for their head-to-head town halls last week, but Biden was a bigger draw for an earlier pairing of network town halls.
  • Yes, but: Biden's social following is still not even comparable to the size of Trump's. Across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram an YouTube, Trump has over 141 million followers. Across the same platforms, Biden has just under 20 million.

What's next: The Commission on Presidential Debates said it will mute the microphones of during this Thursday night's second debate.

Go deeper

Jonathan Swan, Zachary Basu
Jan 21, 2021 - Politics & Policy
Off the Rails

Episode 8: The siege

Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photos: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Beginning on election night 2020 and continuing through his final days in office, Donald Trump unraveled and dragged America with him, to the point that his followers sacked the U.S. Capitol with two weeks left in his term. Axios takes you inside the collapse of a president with a special series.

Episode 8: The siege. An inside account of the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 that ultimately failed to block the certification of the Electoral College. And, finally, Trump's concession.

On Jan. 6, White House deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger entered the West Wing in the mid-afternoon, shortly after his colleagues' phones had lit up with an emergency curfew alert from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.

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Dave Lawler, author of World
Jan 22, 2021 - World

What has and hasn't changed as Biden takes over U.S. foreign policy

Photo Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Biden swiftly recommitted the U.S. to the Paris climate pact and the World Health Organization, but America's broader foreign policy is in a state of flux between the Trump and Biden eras.

Driving the news: One of the most striking moves from the Biden administration thus far was a show of continuity — concurring with the Trump administration's last-minute determination that China had committed "genocide" against Uyghur Muslims.

Go deeper (2 min. read)Arrow
Dion Rabouin, Courtenay Brown, Jennifer A. Kingson
Jan 22, 2021 - Economy & Business

Biden's centrist words, liberal actions

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

President Biden talks like a soothing centrist. He promises to govern like a soothing centrist. But early moves show that he is keeping his promise to advance a liberal agenda.

Why it matters: Never before has a president done more by executive fiat in such a short period of time than Biden. And those specific actions, coupled with a push for a more progressive slate of regulators and advisers, look more like the Biden of the Democratic primary than the unity-and-restraint Biden of the general election.

Go deeper (1 min. read)Arrow