November 12, 2015

Ted Cruz Was the Most Tweeted Candidate on Tuesday Night

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I’m not even sure what this means, but it’s a slow news day and I figure a colorful chart might brighten things up. Everyone loves colorful charts, don’t they?

Anyway, a team of wonks from the Monkey Cage has put together a measure of Twitter activity during the Republican debate on Tuesday. Unfortunately, their software chose three shades of teal for three of the candidates, and I sure hope I got them right when I labeled the lines. Ted Cruz was apparently the most talked about by a large margin. This might be due solely to the fact that he got far more talking time than anyone else (13 minutes, vs. 11 minutes for the second-place Donald Trump). Ben Carson was the least talked about, and he also got the least talk time (about 9 minutes).

In any case, by the end of the debate (23:00) the top candidates were Cruz, Kasich, Rubio, and Trump. The other four had all faded to nothing. Oddly, while tweets about most of the candidates ebbed after the debate ended, Cruz continued to take off. His Twitter activity was higher at 11:30 than it was at any time during the debate. Make of this what you will.

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