Vincent Harris, a social-media consultant who helps Republican campaigns, [says]

With Fox News or without Fox News, “Gov. Palin is an Internet celebrity, she’s an Internet politician; and her supporters aren’t going anywhere.” Have a look at her Facebook page and her nearly 3.5 million “likes.” When asked how that Web audience advanced Cruz’s cause, Harris responded: “Gov. Palin’s endorsement helped the Cruz campaign immensely online, both to raise money and [to] help energize Republican primary voters.”

To marshal her audience, Palin keeps her page updated pretty frequently, sometimes sharing personal stuff and oftentimes presenting her distinctive politics in her distinctive articulation...It would cost $2 million, says Harris, to build a Facebook page as powerful as the one that Palin is sitting on. “She already has the organic base that most politicians would kill for,” says Harris. “If she wants to get aggressive again, she can do it and she has 3.5 million people that she can talk to. That is more than most Fox shows.”

Palin’s Facebook audience, indeed, just blows away that of so many other political figures. Bill Clinton has a third of Palin’s following; Donald Trump has a sixth; John Boehner has a tenth. That said, Palin’s fan count dwarfs the number of folks who are actively engaged with her content, a point that Harris himself made in a 2010 Daily Caller piece: “Governor Palin may have the most number of fans among Republicans, but it appears she may have reached a saturation point among activists on America’s largest social network,” wrote Harris.