During Thursday night’s GOP debate, FoxNews.com tracked real-time Twitter feedback by using two hashtags, #answer and #dodge. When viewers felt a candidate was answering the question, they tweeted #answer along with the candidate’s name. And when a candidate was avoiding it, #dodge. The results were compiled in real-time on FoxNews.com, powered by Mass Relevance:
(Screen grab provided by Fox News before the debate began.)
The hashtags evaluated the candidate’s performance overall, not by specific question. Fox News tells us that it counted 150,000 tweets with the two hashtags during the two-hour debate. And not surprisingly perhaps, Ron Paul’s social-savvy supporters helped him lead the way positive #answer tweets for much of the night.