Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, or at least their campaign staff, spent Monday night posting altered versions of each other’s campaign slogans and logos, in a check-out-how-tech-savvy-I-am fight that might as well have been hashtagged #DownWithTheKids.



But while they were exchanging Twitter jibes, Bernie Sanders was in Los Angeles giving a speech to more than 15,000 raucous supporters, safe in the knowledge that, in social media terms at least, he appears to have the upper hand.

Sanders, the long-serving, independent Vermont senator who is now bidding for the Democratic nomination, has 1.6m people who like his Facebook page. Clinton has 1.1m likes, Bush a lowly 245,000.

If this seems an ineffective measure of popularity, a better indicator is in the rate of people who have begun supporting the politicians’ causes. For the past two months Sanders – until recently a relative unknown compared to Clinton and Bush – has been leading the other presidential candidates in growing an engaged and dedicated Facebook audience , according to social media monitor CrowdTangle.

On Twitter, Sanders lags behind the 4m followers of Clinton – who has spent the past 23 years as an international figure – but again trounces Bush, who is widely seen as the favourite to win the Republican nomination.

Sanders has numbers the other candidates would give a staffers’ right arm to achieve. The desire for a more visible online presence is presumably what motivated the Clinton-Bush exchange on Monday, which began when Bush tweeted an altered version of Clinton’s student loan banner and continued with Clinton’s campaign scribbling all over Bush’s altered banner, like a middle-school bully defacing someone’s pencil case.

For good measure, the Bush Twitter team then turned Clinton’s “H” logo on its side to supposedly show how taxes would increase under a Clinton administration.

Here’s hoping the childishness would decrease under either candidate’s presidency.

Meanwhile, Sanders excels beyond the realm of likes and followers. The self-stated democratic socialist consistently has the highest level engagement on his individual Facebook posts, meaning he has people liking his messages, sharing his thoughts, commenting on his plans.

Sanders’ popularity on the internet is a further example of his success with young people – a key demographic given the increasing voter turnout among 18-to-29-year-olds in recent years.

Around 50% of young people voted in 2012. In the 1990s the youth turnout was regularly less than 40%, according to Politico. A study by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement found that the youth voting bloc made the difference in four swing states – Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Florida – counting for 80 electoral college votes.

Though young people #FeelTheBern online, Sanders’ popularity extends far beyond social media. In Bushwick, the beating heart of New York City hipsterdom, Sanders watch parties have been packed out with beards and Vans and tattoos. In Portland, a city with a similar vibe but more rain, it’s a similar story.

You can buy T-shirts with the message “Bernie is Bae”. There are rappers coming out in support of the Sanders campaign. In July supporters nationwide held over 3,000 viewing parties to watch a live Sanders webcast.

In a final indicator of Sanders’ unique appeal, around five weeks ago the hashtag #babesforbernie began to appear on Instagram. Women, mostly young women, were using it to tag their own photos. They tagged themselves with signs, they tagged themselves with T-shirts, they even tagged themselves with Sanders.

It’s not a definitive indicator, but it’s another sign that Sanders is the social media, young people’s candidate of choice. There is, after all, no #babesforbush.

With additional reporting by Jessica Lee.