The review, which took place between 14 February and 15 March 2010, found a staggering 4,688 comments and wall posts had been made on the party's fan page. This compared with only 1,229 commented or posted on the Labour Party's page and 727 on the Liberal Democrats, although the report did not identify when the pages were initially established. The review demonstrates the gulf between the Conservatives' online engagement tactics on the platform.

The research has been revealed as Facebook today launched a political campaigning page Democracy UK to support election fever online.

The study, which was carried out by digital agency Diffusion, also found that the Tories hold a massive 69 per cent concentration of prospective parliamentary candidates on the social networking platform. However, 55 per cent of Liberal Democrat MPs are on the site compared to 38 per cent from the Conservative Party and 34 per cent from Labour.

Ivan Ristic, director, Diffusion said: ‘When it comes to reaching beyond the metropolitan elites to mainstream voters, Facebook and not Twitter is where political parties in the UK should be spending their time and resources.

‘The key test for all political parties will be how well they can turn their Facebook friends into Facebook advocates.'

The Conservative Party has 23,800 individuals connected to its fan page in comparison to only 7,000 connections each being made to the fan pages of Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

169 current MPs' profiles and more than 560 PPCs' Facebook profiles were reviewed for the study.