Breitbart News has learned that the Facebook page for the re-election campaign of U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) saw an early October spike in support from youths in Istanbul, Turkey.
According to public analytics on Roberts’ Facebook page revealing statistics about who “likes” the page, Roberts’ page had just 54 “likes” at the beginning of October. Over the next 10 days, however, that number shot up to 2,087 “likes” as of Oct. 11. According to a screen shot taken on Oct. 16 obtained by Breitbart News, the “Most Popular City” for “likes” at that point was Istanbul, Turkey, a major city in the Middle East. The “Most Popular Age Group” was 18-24 years old.
Roberts’ campaign spokeswoman Sarah Little confirmed the unusual revelation to Breitbart News, saying in a statement on Monday that the campaign is unsure how it happened.
“We noticed the unusual nature of the likes last week after we encouraged supporters to like and share the campaign page,” Little said in an email. “The campaign did not authorize or pay for anything to explain this result. Our focus has been to grow likes and shares among Kansans.”
After this development came to the campaign’s attention, the number of “likes” has dropped significantly back down to 356 as of Oct. 14. The “Most Popular City” has now become Wichita, Kansas. Little did not specify what the campaign did, if anything, to change these analytics.
Roberts is facing re-election next year. Milton Wolf, a doctor who is a distant cousin of President Barack Obama and who became involved in the conservative movement in opposition to Obamacare, recently announced a primary challenge to Roberts.
“That’s pretty funny but I doubt young people in Istanbul will continue to support Pat Roberts once they learn he voted twice to confirm Kathleen Sebelius to run ObamaCare,” Wolf told Breitbart News by email when asked about Roberts’ Istanbul youth Facebook support spike.
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