ONE year after Donald Trump’s surprise victory in America’s presidential election of 2016, objective indicators of his job performance are poor. His approval rating of 37% is lower than that of any other commander-in-chief nine months into a term since the advent of modern polling. His legislative allies are yet to pass any major laws despite controlling both chambers of Congress. It is perhaps little wonder that Mr Trump seems to take solace in the one area where he has been indisputably successful: his Twitter account.

Mr Trump currently has 42.4m Twitter followers, making him the 21st most popular account on the social-media platform. Even more impressive is how fast he has reached that total. Over the past year the president’s following has increased by a whopping 225%—among other leading Twitter accounts, the followership of Cristiano Ronaldo, a footballer, rose at the second-fastest rate, just 32%. Along the way Mr Trump’s account overtook those of many of his political enemies, including Hillary Clinton, the National Football League and even the “failing” New York Times (see chart).

Mr Trump’s account remains well behind that of his predecessor. Mr Obama has 97m followers, of whom an estimated 78% are actual people. Just 47% of Mr Trump’s followers are real, according to TwitterAudit. But the relative figures are expected to change. Twitter Counter, a site that tracks Twitter statistics, predicts that in ten years Mr Trump will have 297m followers to Mr Obama’s 218m. Republican Party leaders would love the president to kick his Twitter habit. That is unlikely. Mr Trump is obsessed with ratings, and as far as this one is concerned he is winning bigly.