A fairly pointless but fun survey asks: If the British could follow any figure from history on Twitter, who would it be? The top answer, apparently, is ex-war time prime minister Sir Winston Churchill, a man who was renown for making speeches that far exceeded 140 characters.
Jesus, who isn’t short of followers outside of the Twittersphere, came in at a surprising second.
The poll, which surveyed 2000+ people across the UK, was carried out by YouGov on behalf of Prospect Magazine. It tested the views of the 11% of British people who are estimated to use Twitter, about 5.5m, and compared them to the rest of the country. The conclusion?
While UK Twitterers “have a strong liberal bias in their politics, their heroes are conservative.” Although we’d hardly call Jack the Ripper (13%) or Hitler (14%) conservative choices, even if the latter had ‘certain’ oratory skills (see the full top-twenty list below).
Lastly, the survey’s accompanying press release features a quote from Prospect Magazine editor David Goodhart that we just coudn’t resist sharing:
“Churchill and Jesus both specialised in brief, memorable phrases — so both ‘we will fight them on the beaches’ and ‘blessed are the meek’ are messages perfect for the Twitter generation”, he says.
“Jesus was obviously born to tweet.”
Hey, we’re fans of Twitter too. But come on…
Winston Churchill 34%
Jesus 30%
Charles Darwin 28%
Martin Luther King 24%
Leonardo Da Vinci 23%
William Shakespeare 20%
John F Kennedy 20%
Queen Elizabeth I 17%
Princess Diana 16%
Oscar Wilde 16%
Mahatma Gandhi 15%
Adolf Hitler 14%
Jack the Ripper 13%
Marilyn Monroe 12%
Eve (as in Adam and Eve) 11%
Che Guevara 10%
Joan of Arc 8% Marie Antoinette 5%