Super Tuesday Results From Twitter: Santorum Takes The Night

Tuesday night was the biggest night of the 2012 Republican primary season so far, as ten different states took to the polls to vote for who they feel is the best candidate to represent the party come November. Off and on frontrunner and often-deemed “inevitable” candidate Mitt Romney won six states, while Newt Gingrich won one contest – his home state of Georgia.

It felt like all eyes were on Santorum, however, as the GOP’s latest candidate to rise to the top had to have a strong showing in order to legitimize his continuation in the race. Santorum took three states – North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. And he the battle for Ohio was the closest race of the night, with Romney only edging him out by 1%. Many feel that this performance was good enough for Santorum to move forward with his campaign.

Though pundits can debate who really won the night and who has the most momentum moving forward – one thing is clear. Rick Santorum commanded the most attention on Twitter.

Here’s what Twitter has to say on their blog about Santorum breaking records:

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.

So Santorum received the load of tweets on Tuesday evening, with Romney spiking at about 29,000 tweets per hour and Gingrich hitting a little of 15,000 in the hour around the time he was called the winner of Georgia. Ron Paul failed to make a significant impact on the social site when compared to the other candidates.

Of course, Twitter chatter doesn’t mean that you’re the most popular candidate on the interwebs. Santorum got the good, the bad, and the commentary from the Twitterverse:

Did you follow the primaries on Twitter? Let us know in the comments.