Repub­li­can con­gres­sion­al can­di­date Lau­ren Boe­bert has amassed a Twit­ter fol­low­ing of more than 200,000 sup­port­ers — more than Colorado’s cur­rent gov­er­nor, its for­mer gov­er­nor, and a U.S. sen­a­tor — giv­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive upstart an online edge over her Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent in Colorado’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict race, which is expect­ed to be a close contest.

“Some­body who knows how to use social media has an advan­tage,” says Michael Corn­field, a George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor who stud­ies Twit­ter use by con­gres­sion­al cam­paigns. “That doesn’t guar­an­tee vic­to­ry, of course, but that is an advantage.”

Boebert’s rise to con­ser­v­a­tive social media star­dom coin­cid­ed with her stun­ning win over Rep. Scott Tip­ton, a Cortez Repub­li­can who rarely uses the web­site, on June 30. Twit­ter is well suit­ed for the time and place Boe­bert finds her­self in, cam­paign­ing across half of Col­orado on a rel­a­tive­ly small bud­get dur­ing a pan­dem­ic that has dras­ti­cal­ly shrunk crowd sizes.

“It adds to name ID, which brings in mon­ey,” said Trish Zornio, a for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date for U.S. Sen­ate who also has a large Twit­ter fol­low­ing. “It’s just anoth­er way to add to your cam­paign. It’s not the end-all and be-all but it is some­thing that con­tributes. She’s got a pret­ty sol­id platform.”

Boebert’s posts on the social media site — which has become a playpen for politi­cos and the reporters who cov­er them — are a mix of Trumpian antag­o­nism, con­ser­v­a­tive plat­i­tudes, cul­ture war charges, pol­i­cy ideas and the occa­sion­al con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry. They rarely men­tion her oppo­nent, Diane Mitsch Bush, but have a Trump-like abil­i­ty to gar­ner imme­di­ate atten­tion from dis­par­agers and devo­tees alike.

It wasn’t always that way. Boebert’s Twit­ter account was born when her cam­paign was, in Decem­ber 2019, and was lit­tle used for the first sev­er­al months. By mid-Feb­ru­ary, she was ask­ing sup­port­ers to help her reach 3,000 fol­low­ers. She would go a dozen days with­out tweet­ing at times and in April post­ed only 13 times.

In May, her approach changed, and her fol­low­ing sky­rock­et­ed to 30,000 by May 6. Posts were sud­den­ly gar­ner­ing thou­sands of retweets and likes. At times in May she tweet­ed more in a day than she had in all of April. She tweet­ed at pop­u­lar accounts, name­ly Trump, bring­ing her more atten­tion from his fans.

Boe­bert, 33, quick­ly found an audi­ence in con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles decry­ing shut­downs meant to slow the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. Clos­ing small busi­ness­es was “crim­i­nal,” she wrote May 6. Three days lat­er she alleged, “If Hillary (Clin­ton) was Pres­i­dent, no one would even be talk­ing about this virus.” On May 12, she crit­i­cized Antho­ny Fau­ci, America’s top infec­tious dis­ease expert. On May 15, she accused Democ­rats of pro­long­ing shut­downs to hurt Trump.

Posts that Boe­bert has clicked the “like” but­ton on have delved deep­er into the online world of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. In ear­ly July, she liked a post that fea­tured the hash­tag #WWG1WGA, or “where we go one, we go all,” a ral­ly­ing cry for believ­ers in QAnon, a far-right con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that alleges Trump is secret­ly fight­ing an elite cabal of Satanist pedophiles who oper­ate a child sex traf­fick­ing ring.

Boe­bert expressed some inter­est in QAnon while appear­ing on a QAnon talk show in mid-May but she and her cam­paign spokesper­son have since stat­ed on sev­er­al occa­sions that Boe­bert does not believe in the con­spir­a­cy theory.

On June 13, she liked a tweet from QAnon believ­er DeAnne Lor­raine that claimed the “world is wak­ing up” and used the hash­tag #Expose­Bill­Gates, ref­er­ence to a far-right con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that the Microsoft founder is try­ing to track and con­trol the world’s pop­u­la­tion through microchips in coro­n­avirus vaccines.

On June 3, Boe­bert liked a tweet from a par­o­dy account that called for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma a “Kenyan ter­ror­ist” and claimed Michelle Oba­ma is a man. The tweet was lat­er unliked by Boebert.

Boebert’s most pop­u­lar tweets came in May, the month of her Twit­ter rise. One list­ing promi­nent Democ­rats and their time in office end­ed, “Yet some­how Trump is the one who cre­at­ed the prob­lems in Amer­i­ca,” and was shared 22,700 times. Anoth­er accus­ing Democ­rats of favor­ing undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants over small busi­ness own­ers received 17,900 retweets. A star of right-wing Twit­ter was born.

“If you’re on a cam­paign and you want to know how you’re doing on Twit­ter, you look at retweets,” said Corn­field. “If peo­ple are retweet­ing what the can­di­date is say­ing, that’s an approx­i­mate sign of sup­port. That is peer-to-peer com­mu­ni­ca­tion, which in our age is more trust­ed than com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the media.”

Boebert’s cam­paign has told reporters she is still study­ing poli­cies before tak­ing posi­tions and lay­ing out plans, but she has post­ed some pol­i­cy ideas to Twit­ter. Among them: that open car­ry should be legal nation­wide, for exam­ple, and that “there shouldn’t even be a fed­er­al Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion.” In May, she wrote she would “veto any leg­is­la­tion that rais­es tax­es,” a pow­er that mem­bers of Con­gress do not have.

Trump’s trans­for­ma­tion of Twit­ter into the tech world’s loud­est mega­phone has spurred con­sid­er­able research of its effects on elec­tions since 2016. A Corn­field study of 2018 midterm cam­paigns found four incum­bent House mem­bers avoid­ed Twit­ter in the months before the elec­tion and half lost. Five Democ­rats who used Twit­ter far more than their oppo­nents beat Repub­li­can incum­bents that year.

“And the pri­ma­cy of dig­i­tal cam­paign­ing has risen because of the pan­dem­ic,” he said Thursday.

Zornio, despite a Twit­ter fol­low­ing of 109,000 that rivaled that of her top oppo­nents, did not win the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry this year. But it helped the polit­i­cal novice make a run.

“I didn’t make any fundrais­ing calls. I didn’t have wealthy peo­ple in a Rolodex. I wasn’t that kind of can­di­date. So, the six-fig­ures-plus that I raised came almost exclu­sive­ly from Twit­ter posts,” she said.

Mitsch Bush has about 8,300 Twit­ter fol­low­ers, as of Fri­day. Using analy­sis soft­ware, Corn­field cal­cu­lat­ed the num­ber of times her name was men­tioned on Twit­ter and the num­ber of times Boebert’s name was men­tioned between July 1 — the day their race began — and Thursday.

“The num­bers are kind of stag­ger­ing,” the pro­fes­sor said. “In the U.S., Boebert’s name has been men­tioned in this two month and 10 day peri­od almost 51,000 times. 50,920 to be exact. Mitsch Bush’s name has been men­tioned 2,531 times. That’s a 20-fold dif­fer­ence in mentions.”

With­in Col­orado, Boebert’s name was men­tioned 3,629 times com­pared to 687 times for Mitsch Bush, a less dras­tic dif­fer­ence. The Demo­c­rat has crit­i­cized Boebert’s tweets for con­tain­ing lit­tle men­tion of Col­orado or the 3rd Dis­trict. An Aug. 20 fundrais­ing email from Mitsch Bush’s cam­paign looked at 24 hours of tweets from Boebert.

“Just like we thought: not a sin­gle men­tion of Col­orado. Instead, she made a nod to her QAnon fol­low­ers by attack­ing Tom Han­ks, talked about rap­per Car­di B, and topped off the 24 hours with an attack on the intel­li­gence of her favorite bogey­woman, AOC,” the email stat­ed, refer­ring to Rep. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, a New York Demo­c­rat that Boe­bert has tweet­ed about 37 times.

Scant polling in the race between Boe­bert and Mitsch Bush has shown a close con­test in a dis­trict Repub­li­cans won eas­i­ly four years ago. On Thurs­day, Boe­bert received the endorse­ment of Trump, the Repub­li­can pres­i­dent she idolizes.

It was announced on Twitter.