Looking at raw daily numbers, we’ve already noted that Presidential hopefuls Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich are making significant strides over the past two weeks. Another interesting way to analyze the data among the GOP field is to compare each candidate’s running 7-day average of new social media followers (Twitter and Facebook), and how that average has changed over recent weeks. We begin with each candidate’s 7-day average beginning on October 24 (that is, their … Read entire article »

The GOP candidates squared off in a debate on November 9, in an event hosted by CNBC. We’ll leave the “who won” and “who lost” debates to the political analysts, but what we can analyze with absolute certainty is which candidate picked up the most new social media followers in the hours after the debate. Further, by comparing last night’s gains with those from the previous debate, we can determine some momentum among the candidates, … Read entire article »

It’s common the day after a debate to see commentary and analysis of “who won” or polls to gauge voter reaction. We thought it’d be interesting to measure the immediate social media reaction to the GOP debate held in Las Vegas on October 18, 2011 by looking at which candidates had the biggest increase in their social media following. We achieved this by measuring the number of Twitter and Facebook followers each candidate had prior … Read entire article »