Sanders fans start to migrate online to Jill Stein

Jill Stein, the Green Party's candidate for president, is enjoying a boost in popularity on Reddit and Facebook as disillusioned fans of Bernie Sanders consider their options, now that Hillary Clinton is the Democrats' official nominee.

Since moderators announced their plan to close /r/SandersForPresident, users on the biggest Bernie subreddit have been reacting with chaos and rage), and traffic to the online community is in free-fall. The subreddit hit its peak in March, with almost 36 million pageviews. This month, it's on course to receive less than six million views, its worst month since December 2015. Meanwhile, visits to the largest pro-Stein community on Reddit, /r/JillStein, are exploding. In June, the subreddit only had about 37,000 views. This month, more than 215,000 views were recorded on the subreddit, nearly six times as many as the month before. The spike in views began in earnest on July 12, when Sanders formally endorsed Hillary Clinton in a joint rally in New Hampshire.

At the same time, Jill Stein's official Facebook page is seeing an exponential increase in likes since the 12th. Vocativ analyzed the candidate's Facebook likes by American users only, finding that the page received a nearly ten percent increase in likes on July 13th alone, jumping from 264,396 likes to 290,671. Since then, the rate of new likes has remained high, and as of today nearly 380,000 Americans like Stein on Facebook. In the beginning of the month, that number stood at 252,074.

See photos of Sanders' supporters

These numbers may be impressive for a third-party candidate, but they still don't compare to Bernie Sander's internet fan base. Sanders has more than 4.4 million likes on his Facebook page, meaning that Stein still has a long way to go.

The post Sanders Fans Start To Migrate Online To Jill Stein appeared first on Vocativ.