Prendergast tops poll — for most talked-about candidate online

She may be languishing in the opinion polls and at risk of losing her seat. But Labour MEP Phil Prendergast has generated more online conversation in the last six months than any other candidate in the Ireland South constituency.

And while Fianna Fáil’s legendary vote getter, Brian Crowley MEP, looks set to top the poll again, he only ranks fourth in the online conversation league table, just behind Ballyhea Says No campaigner Diarmuid O’Flynn, who is running his Euro election campaign on a shoestring budget and almost exclusively online.

The insights are contained in an analysis, conducted by Cork-based H+A Marketing + PR, and released yesterday.

The award-winning agency has invested in a revolutionary new social media listening tool, Sysomos, which is reshaping the way online conversations are being captured.

It analyses traditional media sources, including 55,000 publications and broadcast outlets daily.

But its can also analyse over 50m blogs, its tracking programme oversees activity on Facebook and Twitter, and some 13m online forum posts are collected daily from over 250,000 unique messaging board sites.

The agency’s social media unit, headed by Dara O’Donovan, has spent the last six months analysing the online share of voice that all the Ireland South candidates have received.

They found Ms Prendergast captured the highest digital share of conversation amongst the South candidates with 24%, followed by Fine Gael’s Simon Harris on 18%, and Independent candidate Diarmuid O’Flynn ranking third with 14%.

Brian Crowley only ranked fourth, with 10%, while another sitting MEP, Fine Gael’s Seán Kelly, came in seventh of the 15 candidates.

Fine Gael senator Deirdre Clune pipped Sinn Féin candidate Liadh Ní Riada to fifth place to capture 9% of the share.

“These results are not akin to opinion polls — the innovative listening tool delivers a fresh perspective on how candidates are viewed by the public,” said H+A.

“The snapshot reflects which candidate is being mentioned most, with these online conversations not always the type of coverage that candidates seek.

“We are merely displaying which candidates are driving talkability online.”

The agency said it can tailor the listening tool to cover any news topic of interest, or to accurately gather what’s being said about a person of interest at any given time.