It’s super interesting to me that Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina vote. I thought that Mitt Romney was going to win New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida, which would have won him the nomination. Mitt Romney, however, is still winning if you take a look at the social media influence.
ZDNet provides the following analysis of the GOP’s Social Media:
- Facebook User Interactions: Throughout the past 30 days, Romney had the greatest number of interactions by Facebook users to his posts, 60,000 more than Paul, four times more than Santorum and three times more than Gingrich.
- Fan Count: Romney has maintained the greatest number of Facebook fans since July 2011. Ron Paul trails in number of fans, followed by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.
- Fan Growth: Since September 2011, Romney has maintained his fan count lead by six times when compared to Newt Gingrich’s fan count and approximately two times that of Paul.
- People Talking About: Romney has nearly five times the number of people “talking” about him on Facebook when compared with Gingrich, and five times the number of people talking about him when compared to Santorum.
Source: ZDNet: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/mitt-romney-is-dominating-facebook-infographic/7883
I’ve noticed that many individuals are surprised that Romney lost, not that Gingrich won. It seems as if everyone is commenting on what Romney is doing. The competition will have to fight to gain more loyal social followers.
I think it’s important for the GOP to look at social media as a criteria for who should win the nomination. We keep hearing about “the most electable candidate,” but it’s time to incorporate social media to look at fan numbers in regards to who really is the most electable candidate. I think we will know the winner of the election via social media before all states have reported in Election 2012.
We’ll see this November.
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