Matthew Salvini he had arrived before the others. In Italy it was the first politician to exploit social networks massively. Photos, posts, direct. Hundreds of contents poured everywhere. Facebook first of all but also Twitterwhen it still had weight, Instagram and of course TikTok. November 12, 2019 was the first Italian politicianat least among the high-profile ones, to open an account on the Chinese social network. Two years later all the others arrived.
An excessive power that contributed to golden season of consensus. At the 2019 European Championships the League exceeded the 34% and Fratelli d’Italia celebrated the growth at 6.5%. Salvini’s social machine was called The Beast. Powerful numbers. Millions of followersthousands of likes, rivers of comments. Its director was Luca Morisi, a social media guru who left the League staff after a drug and escort scandal.
But now it looks like the car started to jam. The Instagram page Liberi Network has published some data on the trend of Matteo Salvini’s social networks in comparison to the other two center-right party leaders: Giorgia Meloni And Antonio Tajani. The data is interesting but must be taken with some caveats.
Instagram continues to obscure stories about Gaza, even if they are not sensitive content
How much is a follower worth: data from party leaders
According to data published by We Are Social in February 2025, in Italy the 70% of the population uses the platforms. The most used, excluding WhatsApp, are Facebook and Instagram. However, followers are not infinite matter. On Facebook, Matteo Salvini’s profile has already reached 5 million followers. Going up further is difficult. Or better. It is more difficult than Antonio Tajani who is instead a 138,000 followers. Or for Giorgia Meloni, 3.7 million followers.
The case of Instagram is very different. Here Matteo Salvini has 2.4 million followers. Meloni doubles it: 4.8 million. Speaking only of party leaders, Salvini is the second most followed in Italy. Giuseppe Conte has 1.8 million followers. Elly Schlein stops by 435,000. Matteo Renzi a 332,000. Carlo Calenda a 184,000. Antonio Tajani a 90,000. Growth percentages weigh differently depending on the bases from which we start.
The analysis of Matteo Salvini’s profile
The analysis was done on data ranging from January 2025 to October 2025. In about 10 months the number of followers on Giorgia Meloni’s Instagram has grown by 32%. Matteo Salvini of 4.5%. And this despite one quite cumbersome presence. Salvini published in ten months 1,221 posts on Instagram And 1,311 on Facebook. Many, we imagine, are replicas. Meloni stopped at 374 on Instagram and 338 on Facebook.
In addition to followers there is another piece of data that is important: interactions. Here we keep the comparison between Salvini and Meloni because Tajani’s Instagram account is on another one order of magnitude. The interaction rate measures likes and comments compared to the number of followers. For Meloni it is 2.2%for Salvini 0.79%. And this despite Salvini having half the followers.
Just take a look at his profile to see that reach of posts it is no longer efficient. Most posts hover between 5,000 and 25,000 likes. Obviously with some peaks. Salvini alternates his interventions with news videos, voices of people he raises or viral videos. Looking at today’s data, in October the most liked post was a video attacking the strike organized on October 3rd in support of the population of Gaza: 114,000 likes. Meloni’s post hardly goes below 30,000 likes.
