Short answer
Only briefly. A change of leader brought a moment of attention and a small rise in what each post received, but on average no lasting new audience for the party's page.
What the evidence shows
- The study follows 106 changes of party leader in 15 European countries between 2010 and 2020. In the week a new leader took office, the party's page received about 2.4 times its usual engagement relative to other parties.
- The median post drew about 13% more in the following ten weeks, but total engagement was not detectably higher from two weeks to six months after the change.
- Where the new leader followed an interim leader (17 changes), engagement had fallen during the interim period and returned to about its level a year earlier.
- A separate study of page growth found that a change of leader did not add followers to the party's page.
Caveats
The estimates compare each party with other parties in the same country over the same weeks. They describe averages, not any one leader.