House Dems battle for social media supremacy

For the third year in a row, House Democrats held a competition to pull themselves into the social media age. For three weeks, Democratic representatives tried to pile up as many new followers as possible across various social media platforms. Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado took home MVP, compiling 31,578 new Facebook fans, Twitter followers and YouTube subscribers combined. 

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer organized the battle for social media supremacy, which also included head-to-head competitions between Democrats in each house committee and caucus. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee took its category, while the Congressional Black Caucus outpaced its competition. All together, the entire Democratic field gained over 139,000 new followers, according to a press release. 

Perhaps the subtle humor of Polis' Twitter feed helped him take home gold in the competition. The feed includes occasional non-political tweets -- "Practice your #olympics pommel horse routine on the coffin #ThingsNotToDoDuringAFuneral" -- and tongue-in-cheek political commentary -- "I've never been to a #CFA Chick-fil-A... does that mean that I was boycotting them before it became cool? #lgbt."

Polis topped several other social media savvy members, including Rep. Bruce Braley of Iowa, who gained 12,904 followers, and Rep. Karen Bass of California, who accumulated 12,879 new followers. While Bass and Braley's Twitter feeds might not be filled with Polis-level humor, they do best Polis in the visual category. Braley has a recent series of pics of him on a biking trip. Bass frequently posts snapshots of her speaking appearances around the country.

The Congressional Black Caucus crushed the second-place Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. The CBC boasts 39,128 "likes" on Facebook, CAPAC has a mere 1,037 "likes." The CBC's most recent post, about President Barack Obama's Education Excellence for African Americans initiative, was shared 103 times. 

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Democrats stepped up their game during the competition, tweeting up to eight times a day this past week. The second place House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats apparently had better things to do, only tweeting once all of July.