Super Tuesday Twitter Results Are In

With delegates from 10 states up for grabs, Super Tuesday has been a highly anticipated day on the path to the Republican nomination. This chart maps the conversation about each of the candidates over the course of the day. You can see the volume of Tweets increase sharply around the time the first results were reported, and additional lifts as each candidate addressed citizens and voters on TV.

The data surprise of the night? With an unexpectedly tight race in Ohio between @RickSantorum and @MittRomney, the conversation on Twitter about Santorum spiked far higher than any of the other candidates. In just the hour between 6pm and 7pm PT, there were nearly 40,000 Tweets referencing Rick Santorum. In fact, this is a new 2012 Election Twitter record. Our previous highest candidate spike belonged to Newt Gingrich, on the day he won the South Carolina Primary.

The data tells one part of the of the story, the Tweets tell another. Throughout the day, most of the top retweeted Super Tuesday Tweets were the funny ones. Note: The “Rmoney” photo is actually an image that was circulated in February, and has been confirmed to be a Photoshopped image, not a photograph.

See more in our Funniest Super Tuesday Tweets Twitter Moment.

As the results began to come in, political reporters and political junkies alike were glued to their televisions—and sharing their insights on Twitter.

See more in our Super Tuesday Results Twitter Moment.

Finally, here’s our earlier blog post with charts that show the road to #SuperTuesday on Twitter in Tweets that mention candidates and candidate follower growth.