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Sanders won the GOP debate — on Facebook

Bernie Sanders, frontrunner
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While there are many lists of presidential candidates who supposedly won Wednesday night’s GOP debate, the man who truly took home the prize doesn’t appear on any of them.

That’s because he’s not a Republican.

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was crowned king of the debate yet again after producing the single biggest Facebook post of the night by far.

“It wasn’t even close,” says Brandon Silverman, CEO of CrowdTangle, a company that measures and analyzes social media interactions.

“The evening was really pretty sad,” Sanders wrote in the Facebook post that garnered over 176,000 likes and 35,000 shares. “This country and our planet face enormous problems. And the Republican candidates barely touched upon them tonight. And when they did, they were dead wrong on virtually every position they took. The Republican Party cannot be allowed to lead this country. That’s why we need a political revolution.”

Sanders also live-tweeted the debate using the hashtag #DebateWithBernie.

By comparison, the most shared Facebook post from a GOP candidate, which was published by Ben Carson, garnered 128,000 likes and 8,700 shares.

This wasn’t Sanders’s first GOP debate victory, either.

During the first debate on August 6, Sanders generated the most retweeted tweet of the night, with over four times the retweets of the next candidate down: Hillary Clinton.

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