Of course Twitter is a powerful tool at a leader’s disposal. We’ve seen how it can be carelessly thrown around dangerously, how it can inform the masses, and how it can target people like a laser.

So too is Instagram. Life shots, behind the scenes, brand building in a different shade. You’d have to really try to make a candidate’s Instagram page a net negative on their personal image.

What I intend to do in this essay is examine the YouTube followers and channels of the bigger 2020 candidates and see what can be inferred. YouTube is the 2nd most popular website on earth, ever, and I want to make a strong case for political video going forward.

In fact, YouTube is the only video sharing website in the top 20 websites. Netflix comes in at #23, Twitch at 26. (Yahoo! is still at #9 somehow, by the way.)

500 hours of footage are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

I will present a list of the major 2020 candidates below, ranked the same as above, but with their clickable YouTube subscribers listed in bold font, a third number after their Instagram follower total, and [a new number] indicating how that candidate’s YouTube count ranks, by subscribers/followers.

Donald Trump: 62.9 Million Twitter / 14.1M Instagram / 184K YouTube [2nd] 🥈

Bernie Sanders: 9.5M / 3.5M / 197K [1st] 🥇

Cory Booker: 4.3M / 794K / 3K [10th]

Joe Biden: 3.7M / 1.3M / 7.1K [7th]

Elizabeth Warren: 3M /1.7M / 7.1K [6th; Warren is 5 subscribers ahead of Biden]

Kamala Harris: 3M /2M / 5.5K [8th]

Marianne Williamson: 2.8M / 469K / 8.1K [5th]

Beto O’Rourke: 1.5M / 982K / 5.1K [9th]

Pete Buttigieg: 1.4M / 838K / ¿? (Pete’s website didn’t list an official YouTube channel, and it doesn’t seem like the campaign maintains one.)

Amy Klobuchar: 742.6K / 107K / 308 (I have more YouTube subscribers than Amy)

Andrew Yang: 628K / 290K / 69K [4th]

Tulsi Gabbard: 525.7K / 186K / 84K [3rd] 🥉

Julián Castro: 359.6K / 109K / 426* [bad]

Steve Bullock: 183.3K / 8,815 / ¿? (Bullock’s campaign lists a YouTube account but it’s not verified and YouTube won’t show how many followers he has.)

Jay Inslee: 93.1K / 19.3K / 359 [very bad]

*Castro’s campaign website did not list his official YouTube channel.

It’s also worth noting that Bullock, Harris, and Gabbard also maintain their own Medium accounts (with 78, 13k, and 11.2K followers respectively) linked with their campaign websites. Harris and Gillibrand also have a campaign Spotify account, and Steve Bullock has a Snapchat linked. (Other candidates use Snapchat but none lists his/hers on their website.)

What stands out to me is how low so many of the candidates are in subscriber numbers. It’s definitely possible that any candidate’s social media count could be inflated with 50% fake accounts, but a standout number is still not to be discounted. They might all be genuine followers.

As a well-funded campaign with, by, and mostly for the young, it may come as no surprise that Bernie’s campaign has the strongest YouTube presence. The campaign streams/uploads full campaign rallies, and most of the videos are long-form. Most of Bernie’s videos hit at least 5,000 views.

Donald Trump is in second place with 184K subscribers. (It surprised me he was so low.) His channel’s videos are a bizarre mix of an abrasive “real news” show hosted by Lara Trump* and provocative videos like this one targeting the Squad; there are still occasional Trump campaign rally videos, but few.

Virtually none of Lara’s pretend news show videos reach 5,000 views. Most of the Trump rallies hover near 20,000 (nine months ago it appears like the numbers were several times higher), and his bizarre attack videos can brake past 100,000 views apiece.

Lara Trump is the wife of Eric Trump (1984 — ), the youngest of the original 3 Trump children born to Donald J. Trump and Ivana Trump. Ivana and Donald were married from 1977–1991.

A couple months ago, I made a YouTube video analyzing, and ranking the campaign logos of more than 20 candidates running in 2020. A few have since dropped out, and a few more have entered the race. If you’re interested in checking out that video, click here.

Allow me a quick aside on a couple candidates. The man is the Democratic frontrunner, funded and endorsed by literally hundreds of distinguished people. Yet his 11-day old video Let’s Get Real About Medicare for All hasn’t managed to get 2,000 views yet. This seems to me like a missed opportunity.