Baby Yoda trending higher on social media than Democratic candidates
Baby Yoda for president! Vote The Child in 2020!
- Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year" award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Vote for Baby Yoda!
Baby Yoda for president? The cute little character from Disney Plus show The Mandalorian is driving almost twice as many average social media interactions on news stories as any 2020 Democratic candidate, according to a report published Friday by Axios.
The data, provided to Axios by social media analytics company NewsWhip, only includes interactions with news stories, not memes, GIFs and other content, so the site estimates Baby Yoda's "reach is probably far wider."
Baby Yoda averages 1,671 social interactions per story, Axios reports, compared with 850 for Bernie Sanders, 839 for Joe Biden and 600 for Pete Buttigieg.
If you're talking pure numbers, Baby Yoda has seen 2.28 million social media interactions on news stories since Nov. 12, when The Mandalorian and Disney Plus premiered. In that same time period, Biden has seen 8 million, Sanders has 2.9 million, and Elizabeth Warren 2.53 million, but Baby Yoda hasn't had nearly as many stories written about it as the candidates, the site says.
Baby Yoda is doing so well, one artist created a form of Jabba the Hutt and dubbed it, "Baby Jabba." Not ... quite the same?
The first wave of Baby Yoda merchandise wasn't that well received, but more is coming. A brief GIF war ended with Baby Yoda GIFs returned to social media sites. And in the latest Mandalorian episode, Baby Yoda met some new friends.
