46 States to Go!Donate today and help us defeat Obamneycare. 1 million dollar money bomb. newt.org/obamneycare/in…

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) February 1, 2012

Now Fox will make issue of the truth after the Florida primary is over…PPL NEED TO GO TO JAIL!

— John Stout (@johnjstout) February 1, 2012

My aunt in Florida just called me. She said she is glad primary is over. She voted for #Newt because she knew his platform.

— irritatedwoman (@irritatedwoman) February 1, 2012

BREAKING: Florida Primary recount show Romney and Gingrich trailing behind 6-pack of Ensure on sale at WalMart.

— KDM (@KyleDaMaren) February 1, 2012

I’m gonna call the Florida race right now, yo.A rich white douchebag is gonna win. #FLPrimary

— KimJongNumberUn (@KimJongNumberUn) January 31, 2012

In the first hours of his presidency, Ron Paul will abolish the presidency. #flprimary

— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) February 1, 2012

In his concession speech when Newt said “It’s time to move on,” Callista looked visibly alarmed. #FLPrimary

— Andy Borowitz (@BorowitzReport) February 1, 2012

Dear Newt supporters: Stop whining about Romney’s money. Ask Sheldon Adelson for more. #FLprimary

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) February 1, 2012

#newt lost elderly women vote in #flprimary. They have already outgrown their daddy issues.

— Dewey Cooper (@dewcooper) February 1, 2012

Don’t underestimate the heart of a champion and a TRUE CONSERVATIVE-Newt Gingrich!!! #FLPrimary

— AnthonyAguillo (@_anthonyaguillo) February 1, 2012

#Mitt beat #Newt like an old Persian rug in #GOP #FLPrimary-big deal.Perhaps Newt should have taken song requests like a piano bar queen.

— Rory K (@TheatreRo46) February 1, 2012

If the winner of the #FLprimary takes all, why are there STILL 4 candidates?The political pundits don’t know any more than us . . .

— Brian Brewer (@Kuntry_Bwoy) February 1, 2012

#Newt was shell shocked last night in #FLPrimary he should drop out #GOP2012 #tcot #tlot

— Eric Lindell (@EricLindell1) February 1, 2012

Gingrich first GOP candidate to win South Carolina and lose Florida #flprimary

— Liberty News Network (@liberty) February 1, 2012

The best primary results money can buy bought by Mitt. #FLPrimary

— Dina (@DinasRuns) February 1, 2012

Not bad. I mean, he wasn’t doing Al Green.

Experian Hitwise has some interesting information concerning the candidates, but whether or not it could actually predict the primary winner is up in the air. According to their research, Mitt Romney is leading in Florida – if you go by visits to his official website.

Hitwise looked at all four candidates’ sites and gauged traffic from people in the state of Florida. They determined that Mitt Romney received the most total visits from the state for the four weeks ending January 28th.

Romney has received the most visits from Floridians for three straight weeks, but Florida isn’t exactly on the same page as the nation as a whole. During the week ending January 28th, Newt Gingrich’s site actually got the most traffic nationwide.

Obviously, visits to official websites don’t directly translate to votes, but it does show who Floridians have been the most curious about in the month of January. Who knows, once Florida voters found what they were looking for on Romney’s site, it might have pointed them in a different direction. We’ll have to wait until the official primary results roll in to see if web traffic is an accuratel predictor of election results.

You can track those results live, county by county with Google’s Politics & Elections dashboard.

While he and Mitt Romney (and those other two guys) shell their embarrassing political ads en español in order to cajole Latino voters to cast in with them during today’s Florida primary, Gingrich has been quietly courting the vote of another demographic: pets. As in your pets.

Pets With Newt 2012 sounds like a prank site but – I swear – it’s legit and actually paid for by Gingrich’s official campaign. As you can imagine, the website offers his supporters an opportunity to enlist their pets – who I presume have no prior qualifications aside from territorial pissings and the occasional corpophagia – into Gingrich’s cause. All you need to do in order to commit your small, furry companion to the amusing-if-it-wasn’t-true campaign of Gingrich is submit a few pieces of info.

The site’s harmless enough and, honestly, if it were anybody else other than Gingrich I’d probably pass over it. But it’s Newt Gingrich. And it’s attached to his 2012 presidential campaign which, in case you’ve been smartly living under a rock when it comes to modern American politics, has been an epic farce.

You can also see a list of Newt and (third wife) Callista’s favorite zoos. That’s worth taking a look at if only for the opportunity to glimpse the slideshow of Newt mingling with captured animals of prey. I guess his handlers thought it’d be too risky to go find one of those Burmese pythons that have been decimating the Florida ecosystem as a good PR shot for today’s primary.

Finally: I think I get a high-five for making it all the way to this point without making any jokes about how “Pets with Newt” is not really the best name for a site that endorses a known two-time (that we know of) philanderer.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Fred Thompson and Senator John McCain, who endorses Mitt Romney, sat side-by-side. Each extolled the virtues of their respective candidates, prognosticated on the outcome and consequences of the upcoming Florida GOP primary, and talked about different topics of the day.

At one point, Fred Thompson referenced a New York Times article from that morning that outlined Mitt Romney’s recent attacks on his man Newt. In that context he also stated that Romney was getting biased support from Matt Drudge’s “Drudge Report” website in the form of positive coverage for Romney and negative for Gingrich, saying Romney has Drudge in his “back pocket”.

Recently, much hay has been made some supposed statements Newt Gingrich made in private, disparaging Ronald Reagan. And, that headline was played up big on Drudge.

Most GOP candidates go out of their way to speak glowingly of Reagan, who was an extremely popular president for them. To be seen as critical of Reagan in a GOP race would invite ostracism from the party faithful and old guard. And, Gingrich has been selling himself in Florida as a “Reagan conservative”.

Gingrich stumped in and won the recent South Carolina primary with the message that Romney was the GOP pick, regardless of what the people want. He presented himself as an anti-establishment Washington outsider who would challenge the GOP’s presumption.

The Drudge Report ran the story of Thompson’s accusations, and responded with links to three stories that had reported Newt in the lead in weeks prior.

But, they also soon top-lined these gems.

Experian Hitwise Director of Research Heather Doughtery wrote about the Facebook traffic for the presidential candidates this election season and found some encouraging news – if Facebook has anything to say about it – for one Willard Romney and company, at least insofar securing the Republican nomination. The traffic data only leads up to January 21, which was the date of the South Carolina primary so it’s anybody’s guess as to whether I’ll be announcing that Newt “The Gravedigger” Gingrich is the new President of Facebook after Florida’s primary next week.

Regardless, this is where we are now: Romney’s killing it on Facebook. Not only is his official Facebook page getting 1.7x more visits than Ron Paul’s fan page, his closest Republican/Facebook competitor, Romney’s page is netting 2.5x more visitors than Obama’s page. I know the line graph below is a little hard to see, but that red line that’s leaps and bounds ahead of every other line you see? Red is for Romney, and everybody else basically in the gutter looking up at his Facebook star.

If you’re Mitt Romney’s campaign staff and you believe that Facebook is in any way a valid reflection of people’s Real Life behavior and interests, here’s some news to send you to sleep with a smile: people making less than $30,000 are visiting your Facebook page a lot, and people in Ohio are visiting your Facebook page a lot. Why should this make Mitts happy? Because being poor and living in Ohio are two characteristics of the ever-important swing voters who would help decide a general election should Romney obtain the nomination and face Obama.

31.8% of visitors to Romney’s Facebook page in the last four weeks were reported to earn less than $30,000. Furthermore, visitors from Ohio had the highest share of visits in the last four weeks (Utah was closely behind Ohio in shares of visits but that’s Mormon country – Romney’s bread and butter – so that’s not surprising). Whether people just wanna get close with the enemy or are genuinely interested in learning about Romney, he’s pulling in some Facebook interest.

As Dougherty concluded, this is good Facebook news for Romney because it suggests that “social efforts are gaining attention and building an audience on Facebook.” This has been a crazy primary thus far, though, and who knows what the results of the South Carolina primary have done to this race. Also, keep in mind: this is not madness, this is Facebook; where people go when they need to post creepy pictures of their ultrasounds and share the latest frog/wolf/Asian father meme to their dubious friends. And since the third (more?) act of the Newtation is apparently really happening, so we’ll see how everybody’s settled on Facebook after the Florida primary.

Here’s how the Twitterverse responded to this rash of nods from all four remaining GOP candidates.

Newt Gingrich answered the SOPA question first, saying, “I favor freedom.” He said that there are already tools and avenues of recourse in place to allow copyright holders to sue and stop piracy domestically. Gingrich continued:

“The idea that we’re going to preemptively have the government start censoring the Internet on behalf of giant corporations’ economic interests strikes me as exactly the wrong thing to do.”

Mitt Romney chimed in:

“I think he got it just about right… The law as written is far too intrusive, far too expansive, far too threatening to freedom of speech and movement of information across the Internet. It would have a potentially depressing impact on one of the fastest growing industries in America, which is the Internet and all those industries connected to it.”

Ron Paul pointed out that the others were late to the party:

“I was the first Republican to sign on with a host of Democrats to oppose this law… The Republicans, unfortunately, have been on the wrong side of this issue.”

Rick Santorum, while agreeing with everyone else that SOPA goes too far, did have a personal axe to grind.

“The Internet is not a free zone where anybody can do anything they want to do and trample the rights of other people… The idea that ‘anything goes’ on the Internet, where did that come from? Where in America does it say that ‘anything goes’?”

Of course, Rick Santorum has been embroiled in his own personal fight with Google and difficulties on the Internet.

But, the Republicans aren’t Facebook official with their Romney relationship status yet and so we’re still supposed to play along as if we still believe in Santa Claus. Contributing to the charade that this weekend’s primary is meaningful, social media scientist (can you actually major in that now?) Dan Zarrella took a look at the Twitter activity regarding the final four candidates – Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich – to see how each of them are doing among the crucial Twitter constituency. Using the multiple metrics examined by Zarrella, let’s score how each candidate did and just get this primary election over with:

Most followers: Gingrich.
Average number of Retweets: Paul.
Retweets-per-follower: Paul.
Reply percentage: Gingrich.
Link percentage: Paul.
Mentions per hour: Romney.
Followers per mention: Romney.

Final Score: Santorum, 0; Gingrich, 2; Romney, 2; Paul, 3.

Ron Paul wins! He’s the next President of the United States of Twitter! Come on down! Although, Paul’s had a pretty good relationship with the Twitterscape as the primaries have lurched to inevitabile Romney-vision.

(Oh, and as a conciliatory note, in case people on Twitter weren’t aware, there’s a guy named Rick Santorum running for president, too.)

If only everything were that easy, right? Right. Unfortunately, this is the real world where we still have to grunt and sweat under a weary life of real elections, so take a look at the full infographic to actually understand what’s happening on Twitter with the Drab Four.