Human touch, actual actions sweep Indian PM past White House in global Twitter rankings

In a tight, non-politically driven race, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (5.01-million) has now overtaken the White House (4.99-million) in Twitter followers, to become the fifth-most followed politician in the world. Unlike the White House tweets, Modi sidelines quotes and instead concentrates on enacting positive change through his 140-word imposed limit.

Had fruitful meetings with CMs & detailed presentations with Ministers & Officials. Together we will take India to greater heights.

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 26, 2014

By way of comparison, here’s a typical White House tweet.

“Cynicism is popular these days, but hope’s better.” —President Obama — The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 26, 2014

These statistics, along with many others have been combined into a mega who’s who list of popular political figures and institutions, care of the Twiplomacy data-scraping tool and global PR firm Burson-Marsteller.

Modi uses Twitter as a power tool to broadcast his messages,” says the study, which also lists the top most followed politicians in the world including US President Barack Obama (43-million), Pope Francis (14-million) and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (5-million).

Modi’s new Twitter supremacy impresses and 643 twitter-loving political leaders worldwide are tearing up the social media sphere. More fun facts:

• PresidenciaMX, the twitter account of the Mexican Presidency, posts the most tweets per day with an average of 78
• There are 156 965 474 followers of all 643 political leader twitter accounts
• Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has the most followers in Latin America (2.9-million)
• Obama was the first political figure to sign up on Twitter, and sent his first tweet 5 March 2007 as the then, Illinois 
• Few world leaders tweet personally, save for Finnish Prime Minister designate Alext Stubb, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and Estonian President Toomas Henrik Ilves
• World leaders post on average, 4 tweets per day and as of June 2014, have tweeted a combined 1 932 002 times.

But what of Africa’s political figures? The infographic below outlines the strides African leaders have taken to connect with the little people.