Twitter Used To Rank Republican Candidates

Business Insider has research which shows that among the Republican presidential nominees, “Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich have more than twice the ‘social pull’ among Twitter followers than nominee favorite Mitt Romney.”

The study was conducted by PeekAnalytics to discover how effectively the candidates were taking advantage of social media with respect to the campaigns. According to the study, “Herman Cain and Michele Bachman have both spent brief periods leading the race, but their influence on Twitter–or lack thereof–suggests they are already also-rans.”

The following Twitter stats show a wide social media spread between the candidates… Interestingly, only 34% of Gingrich’s followers are actually verifiable. Earlier this summer, an article in Gawker.com claimed, “But if Newt is winning the Twitter primary, it’s because of voter fraud. A former staffer tells us that his campaign hired a firm to boost his follower count, in part by creating fake accounts en masse.”

However, as the “Verified” list below shows, even discounting for possible bogus accounts the Speaker has the largest number of Twitter followers by a wide margin among the Republican candidates.

To download a full copy of the report, which offers added details about gender and more, click here.

Total Twitter Followers
Newt Gingrich: 1,370,386
Herman Cain: 168,171
Mitt Romney: 164,416
Michele Bachmann: 115,704
Rick Perry: 108,475
Ron Paul: 79,125

Number of “verified” Twitter followers:
Rick Perry: 51,402 ↔ 47%
Herman Cain: 77,548 ↔ 46%
Mitt Romney: 76,002 ↔ 46%
Ron Paul: 34,845 ↔ 44%
Michele Bachmann: 50,418 ↔ 43%
Newt Gingrich: 477,054 ↔ 34%

Social Pull
Rick Perry: 1082x
Newt Gingrich: 934x
Michele Bachmann: 526x
Mitt Romney: 404x
Herman Cain: 466x
Ron Paul: 184x