What’s the social sentiment on Twitter saying about Saturday’s South Carolina Primary? Mashable teamed up with social media analysis company Global Point Research to find out.
In the latest results
from Public Policy Polling (PPP), Former Speaker of the House Newt
Gingrich is strong heading into tonight’s primary. He has a nine point
lead over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Former Pennsylvania
Senator Rick Santorum just barely edged out Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX)
for third place.
The latest American Research Group poll also shows Gingrich leading the rest of the candidates by a wide margin.
Gingrich’s sudden burst of energy is mirrored on Twitter. Ron Paul is
doing much better among Twitter users than in the PPP poll, ranking
just under Gingrich. Romney and Santorum are falling flat on the
microblogging service, with the least positive sentiment surrounding
their campaigns:
Twitter suggests strong showings for Gingrich and Paul, but a less spectacular night for Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.
In Iowa, we found that Romney’s Twitter status fell flat, while Santorum’s spiked — and Santorum was recently declared the winner. New Hampshire’s results showed a clear advantage for Romney, who ran away with the contest.
In research Global Point has done in the past, its data tends to be
about two weeks ahead of polls and elections. For their analysis, Global
Point used tweets from Jan. 15 – Jan. 20 which mentioned the South
Carolina primary. Their weighted metric combines tweet volume and
retweets with detailed sentiment analysis.
