Facebook doesn’t rush to friend Chafee

Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s (D) presidential campaign announcement on Wednesday attracted less attention from Facebook than any other campaign launch so far this cycle, according to data provided by the platform.

In the 24 hours surrounding his announcement, only 27,000 likes, shares, comments and posts were generated by 20,000 people on Facebook.

{mosads}That’s dwarfed by the 10.1 million interactions that were generated around former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement by some 4.7 million people.

Before Chafee’s announcement, former New York Gov. George Pataki (R) held the record for fewest interactions generated by the smallest number of people. Fifty-nine thousand people generated 81,000 interactions related to his announcement.

This week also brought the embarrassing news that Chafee and his team could not remember the password to the Facebook page he had used as governor — leading his wife to post on her own personal page to ask if anyone from his staff remembered the password.

The numbers underscore Chafee’s status as one of the lesser-known candidates this cycle, at least nationally. Within the Democratic field, he lacks the built-in base of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or Clinton’s widespread name recognition.

At his campaign announcement on Wednesday night, Chafee criticized the use of drone strikes and called for America to switch over to the metric system.