A colleague here at UNC asked me the other day if I could scrape the follower counts of the 500+ congressmen who are on currently on Twitter. Using the Twitter GET API, this was enough. Here are the results, with the outlier of John McCain who leads at well north of a million followers, the distribution looks pretty even.
As of November 25th, 2012, the average congressmen had 16,034 followers. Not too shabby, considering their are just a finite number of twitter followers who have over 10,000, and most of those being celebrities. Below are the top 50 Congressmen, by followers. If you’re data inclined, or you’d like to peak at the full list of users (retrieved from CSPANs official Twitter list) download the excel file here>>.
| SenJohnMcCain | 1,791,293 |
| SpeakerBoehner | 390,148 |
| RepPaulRyan | 323,671 |
| NancyPelosi | 264,851 |
| johnboehner | 213,231 |
| MarcoRubio | 208,763 |
| RepRonPaul | 195,698 |
| MicheleBachmann | 163,260 |
| DWStweets | 156,664 |
| JimDeMint | 145,557 |
| SenSanders | 126,368 |
| AllenWest | 108,812 |
| VP | 106,438 |
| alfranken | 105,688 |
| EricCantor | 92,175 |
| clairecmc | 82,578 |
| Senate_GOPs | 78,868 |
| SenatorReid | 72,974 |
| SenRandPaul | 66,845 |
| DarrellIssa | 66,251 |
| ChuckGrassley | 59,845 |
| TomCoburn | 53,551 |
| SenGillibrand | 53,142 |
| JohnKerry | 50,159 |
| ChuckSchumer | 41,017 |
| RepMikePence | 38,121 |
| ThadMcCotter | 37,370 |
| HouseDemocrats | 36,618 |
| jaredpolis | 34,926 |
| keithellison | 34,441 |
| MarkWarner | 34,012 |
| JohnCornyn | 33,297 |
| jasoninthehouse | 31,055 |
| JoeLieberman | 28,024 |
| SenBillNelson | 26,085 |
| GrahamBlog | 24,756 |
| WhipHoyer | 24,352 |
| SenSherrodBrown | 23,633 |
| USSenScottBrown | 23,621 |
| robportman | 22,363 |
| SenatorMenendez | 20,973 |
| RoyBlunt | 20,259 |
| SenatorBoxer | 20,025 |
| SenatorCollins | 20,005 |
| kevinomccarthy | 19,579 |
| SenatorDurbin | 19,563 |
| LuisGutierrez | 17,469 |
| MarkUdall | 17,321 |
| RepTomPrice | 16,776 |
| johnculberson | 16,076 |
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