How Disney’s Baby Yoda character is crushing Democratic candidates Michael Bloomberg and Deval Patrick on social media

At a time when many Democrats wish that the field of presidential primary candidates would shrink — not expand — two more hopefuls have jumped into the race: billionaire businessman and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. And journalist Shane Savitsky, in Axios, has found an interesting way to gauge a lack of support for their campaigns: social media interactions on news stories for Disney’s Baby Yoda character compared to social media interactions on news stories for Democratic candidates.

Baby Yoda is a character on Disney+’s science fiction series “Star Wars: The Mandalorian.” Using November 12-25 data Axios received from NewsWhip for Twitter and Facebook, Savitsky reports, “with Baby Yoda in the mix with the 2020 Democrats, Bloomberg ranks 14th and Patrick 16th in terms of average interactions — likes, comments, shares — per story about them. And Baby Yoda has notched an average interaction rate 10 times higher than theirs.”

Savitsky elaborates, “the internet’s most memeable 50-year-old broke through the online conversation in a huge way since the show’s November 12 premiere, and its viral success should worry the 2020 race’s late Democratic entrants, Michael Bloomberg and Deval Patrick.”

Some Democratic presidential candidates, in terms of Twitter and Facebook interactions for news stories from November 12-25, fared much better than others compared to Baby Yoda.

Savitsky reports, “In terms of raw interactions since November 12, Baby Yoda’s 2.28 million trail only the Democratic race’s group of frontrunners — Joe Biden, 8 million; Bernie Sanders, 2.9 million; and Elizabeth Warren, 2.53 million.”

The three Democratic candidates at the bottom of the list, compared to Baby Yoda, were Bloomberg, Patrick and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

“Because this data only captures interactions with news stories,” Savitsky notes, “it doesn’t take in the wealth of Baby Yoda memes, GIF and content native to social media — meaning that the character’s reach is probably far wider.”