Modi most popular leader on Facebook, Trump leads interactions

With around 45 million likes on his personal page, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to be the most popular world leader on Facebook, while US President Donald Trump dominates the rankings for the most interactions even as leaders across the world grow their audience on the social networking platform amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a study said on April 21.

Trump is the second most popular world leader on Facebook, with around 27 million likes and Jordan’s Queen Rania is in third position with 16.8 million likes, according to in the latest 2020 “World Leaders on Facebook” rankings by leading global communications agency BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe).

Ahead of his India visit in February this year, Trump bragged about being No. 1 on Facebook.

Although Trump is the second most popular world leader on Facebook, the new study found that the US President dominates the rankings for the most interactions with 309 million comments, likes and shares on his Facebook page over the past 12 months, ahead of Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro with 205 million interactions.

“Great honor, I think? Mark Zuckerberg recently stated that “Donald J. Trump is Number 1 on Facebook. Number 2 is Prime Minister Modi of India.” Actually, I am going to India in two weeks. Looking forward to it!,” he said in a tweet.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets US President Donald Trump at the Hyderabad House in New Delhi on Feb 25, 2020 (Photo IANSPIB)

Modi is in third place with a total of 84 million interactions over the past 12 months, the research revealed.

For the first time the study, now in its fourth year, has incorporated the true reach per post for each of the Facebook pages of world leaders defined as a prediction of the number of real views an influencer gets per post rather than the volume of followers alone.

Modi reaches on average 1.7 million of his fans which represents only 3.8 per cent of his Facebook community. Brazil’s President reaches on average 956,000 of his 10 million fans and Trump reaches 877,000 fans, said the study.