{"id":709,"date":"2016-08-11T12:58:54","date_gmt":"2016-08-11T02:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.socialstatus.io\/?p=709"},"modified":"2022-09-07T23:29:09","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T13:29:09","slug":"bunch-tomatoes-delivered-barnaby-joyce-social-media-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialstatus.io\/bunch-tomatoes-delivered-barnaby-joyce-social-media-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"How a bunch of tomatoes delivered Barnaby Joyce social media victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a marathon campaign. 73 days of press conferences, door stops, high viz walk throughs, baby cuddling and peoples\u2019 forums.<\/p>\n

Originally published on Medium<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was one of the longest federal election campaigns in Australian history. While the media scrutinized marginal seats, poll results and key battlegrounds like Western Sydney; there was another key battleground that was equally important, if not considerably more important: social media<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

We here at Social Status love data. So we naturally decided to look into the world of Australian Federal politics on social media during the election campaign. We tracked all posts published by the official Facebook pages of the Federal politicians and political parties during the election campaign and what we found surprised us.<\/p>\n

Looking across thousands of Facebook posts during the campaign there was one post that clearly stood out. With a 23% engagement rate, it was the single highest engaged post across all federal politician posts during the entire election campaign: Barnaby Joyce holding a $2 bag of tomatoes with the caption \u201cJust catching up with a bag full of cousins at Bingara.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those not up to date with the ongoing Barnaby Joyce and Johnny Depp feud, this was the inciting incident on the Jimmy Kimmel Show about a week prior:<\/p>\n