Election night 2012 makes history on Twitter
Tens of millions of tweets, including one heavily retweeted note and picture from the president after he was re-elected, marked the first social media election.
There were 10 million tweets during the first presidential debate, and Twitter’s own election coverage feed @gov said 20 million tweets were posted Tuesday using the #election2012 hashtag, making it the most tweeted political event in US history. As the television networks called the race for President Obama, @gov reported a stunning 327,453 election tweets per minute.
And the most retweeted missive ever came from the @barackobama feed, saying simply “four more years” and attached a TwitPic of the president hugging the First Lady.
As people lined up at the polls on Tuesday, @gov’s #twindex showed that Obama was the most-tweeted-about candidate in every swing state: 40 percent of national tweets to 24 percent for Romney, reversing the trend of recent days.
Become a Ragan Insider member to read this article and all other archived content.
Sign up today
Already a member? Log in here.
Learn more about Ragan Insider.
