But the gap in sentiment between Twitter and Facebook couldn't be bigger.
Twitter, it seems, can't stand them. Whereas Facebook might as well be rolling out the red carpet. Here are a few tweets I found earlier today:
Hoping this UKIP success isn't a reflection of what's going to happen at the general election.
— India. (@IndiaCaitlin) May 26, 2014
Just hearing about UKIP on the news makes my blood boil
— DOMO (@wxlfdomo) May 26, 2014
This might look like I'm just cherry-picking anti-Ukip posts, but I can assure you I am not. Try it for yourself - the bias is clear.
I even put in different search terms - like "I voted Ukip" and "ukip immigrants" - in the hope of finding some Farage fans. But again, the overwhelming majority of opinion was against him.
You voted UKIP? I voted for you to be shot.
— (@ofmiceandbrad) May 26, 2014
UKIP's popularity kinda proves how little the older generation knows about the economy and how much they blame immigrants for it
— Luke Ambrose (@LukeAmbrose69) May 26, 2014
UKIP complaining about 'foreigners and immigrants' like they dont go out for an indian takeaway every friday night pic.twitter.com/f5W7riW1lN
— ricarda'emilia ✨ (@nothinklikeu) May 26, 2014
There are, of course, exceptions. But the general trend on Twitter is definitely not in favour of Farage or his party.
So where are all the Ukip fans?
Well, they're on Facebook, apparently. The following comments are all taken from the pages of mainstream UK news sites.
I should also mention that they have come from both left and right-wing newspaper audiences. I've anonymised them here, but you can go and see for yourself - there are readers of The Independent and The Guardian who are just as anti-EU as readers of The Mail.
This is obviously not a scientific study, but the examples I've shown here - as well as the hundreds of others I've seen while researching for this blog - show a striking difference between the two platforms.
It can even be seen in the numbers of followers on the official UKIP pages: their Facebook has 173,000 likes, as opposed to just 59,000 followers on Twitter.
There are three main reasons for this.
The first is the age gap - Ukip supporters tend to be old. A YouGov poll last year found that 71% of them are over 50 and just 15% are under 40.
Of course, the average Facebook user doesn't come anywhere near this kind of age range, but they are certainly older than their counterparts on Twitter.
Another reason for the difference could be privacy. Twitter is an open, public forum where anyone can see anybody else's posts. Facebook tends to be more closed, with a broad range of settings to protect the things a user says.
This might mean people feel more comfortable expressing views they think the rest of the world will regard as extreme. The posts I've shown above are placed on publicly accessible comment sections, but the generally high level of percieved privacy could still be influencing what people choose to say.
Users are also see more posts from friends and family on Facebook (as opposed to a broader range of journalists, brands and public figures on Twitter), which again might make them feel easier about expressing more radical opinions.
A third reason could be that Facebook is more accessible to less tech savvy people. Twitter tends to be populated by more well-off, well educated people - exactly the type that are less likely to vote Ukip.
Facebook has a far broader socio-demographic range of users, which means more people from poorer households are on it. The same YouGov study on Ukip support showed just 23% of Ukip supporters come from households earning over £40,000. This is compared to 38% for the Tories and 28% for Labour.
Either way, the difference is clear - conversation across the two social networks differs hugely. UKouldn't pay most tweeters to get behind Nige, but FarageBook is firing on all cylinders.
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