Mayor Bill de Blasio finally got the viral hit he was hoping would rescue his on-life-support presidential campaign — but it wasn’t the breakout moment he’d imagined.
“News of him dropping out has already garnered roughly 84,000 mentions in roughly four hours, surpassing his highest media moments while a candidate,” said Josh Ginsberg of the San Francisco-based media analytics firm Zignal Labs.
Earlier this month de Blasio mused that, “People go from unheard of to totally famous in 72 hours in America now, so a candidate like me who’s not that well known yet, you ask me in 72 hours, right? And something might change.”
But de Blasio didn’t even get to control the narrative about his own departure from the campaign after announcing his decision on Morning Joe Friday.
His Twitter handle, @billdeblasio, got 141,000 social engagements by users while President Trump’s tweet mocking the news — “NYC is devastated, he’s coming home!”— amassed 157,300 engagements, according to Ginsberg.
The Washington Examiner article, “Bill de Blasio draws 15-person crowd in Iowa,” was the highest trending story of the mayor’s failed campaign.
“Not making the stage for the most recent debate between Democratic candidates last week seemed to be the campaign’s breaking point, or so the data suggests,” Ginsberg said. He added that online sentiment about de Blasio’s 2020 bid was 71% negative.
