West Dorset MP Chris Loder has sent thousands of tweets since setting up his account, analysis of his online activity reveals.

Analysis of Chris Loder's Twitter account (@ChrisLoder) by Motive PR shows he had sent around 2,600 tweets between first joining the website on September 1 2010 and March 29 this year.

It means the 40-year-old sends an average of less than one tweet per day – putting out just 19 per month.

However, Mr Loder has had this account since before he was elected to the seat – on December 12 2019.

In February, Mr Loder caused a storm on Twitter when he suggested police should not be wasting resources probing a wildlife crime after an investigation was launched into the death of two rare eagles - one of which was found dead in Dorset.

The average MP that has an account sends 3.5 tweets per day, but around one in 10 representatives did not have one at the time the research was done.

Labour MP Karl Turner is the most prolific Tweeter – sending an average of 26.1 per day for 12 years.

The roughly 600 MPs with accounts had sent almost 8 million tweets between them by the end of March.

But Motive said they found little correlation between the number of tweets and retweets an MP sent, and the number of followers they have.

Despite his steady output, Mr Turner has fewer than 41,000 followers – below the average of 54,300 for MPs with accounts.

And though he has tweeted fewer than 6,000 times, Boris Johnson's account is followed by 4.1 million people.

The Prime Minister is one of just four MPs with more than a million followers – ahead of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (2.4 million), current Labour leader Keir Starmer (1.2 million) and ex-PM Theresa May (1 million).

Chris Loder, who serves as a backbench MP, had around 7,000 followers by the end of March.

Of parties with at least 10 members, Labour was reaching the largest section of the electorate – with an average of 63,500 followers each.

Meanwhile, the Scottish National Party's 45 members averaged just 29,300 each.

Despite not taking their seats in the Commons due to their abstentionist policy, Sinn Fein MPs have tweeted almost 80,000 times from their official accounts.