Donald Trump's Tweets Are Diving in Popularity

WASHINGTON, DC — Donald Trump hasn't slowed down on Twitter since being inaugurated as president on Jan. 20, but over the course of less than three months, the popularity of his tweets has declined considerably.

It will take a deep dive into his full Twitter history to get some hard answers as to why that is -- a task that might take a supercomputer considering how prolific he is on Twitter -- but there's no mistaking the trend line.

In the nearly 400 tweets Trump has blasted out on his favorite Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump (ignoring re-tweets), the number of favorites each tweet gets has declined from an average of around 150,000 shortly after his inauguration to about 60-80K in recent weeks. The graph below shows the number of favorites each tweet got, starting at Jan. 21 all the way on the left and ending at April 16 on the right:

Why is that? It's possible that Trump's tweets are merely returning to pre-presidency levels after a brief flash of extra popularity from his high-profile inauguration.

Another possibility is that his tweets aren't as incendiary since he took office, at least on the whole. His followers tend to favorite tweets that blast his opponents or hammer red-meat issues that got him elected. Tweeting about official state visits and speakers at town halls doesn't quite fire up the base.

Of course, even at his declining levels, Trump is without question Twitter's most famous and most favorited user. And as President of the United States, it's unlikely that will change anytime soon. But because favoriting a tweet is something only his supporters are likely to do most of the time, his favorites will be an interesting metric to watch as his presidency goes on -- a metric that wasn't available for past presidents.

Some high-profile Twitter incidents include his accusations against former President Barack Obama that his hotel had been wiretapped, his acknowledgement of protesters at his inauguration, his attacks on Obamacare, and his remarks in favor of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

His decline in Twitter favorites may be a small deal for most, but for a president who is obsessed with popularity, it could very well be a source of irritation for him. He famously slammed the media for showing a side-by-side comparison of his inauguration crowd with that of President Obama's in 2009. He brought up the subject repeatedly, stating at CIA headquarters that it "looked like a million people" at his inauguration.

Here is Trump's most popular tweet since Jan. 20:

Peaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even if I don't always agree, I recognize the rights of people to express their views.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2017

And his least popular tweet:

Weekly Address- https://t.co/tpZ7eqJLUH pic.twitter.com/B2NQzj53ft
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2017

Image via Gage Skidmore