President Obama wins election, tweets before giving speech on TV

By Natan Edelsburg 

President Barack Obama has been re-elected bringing an end to a long and grueling battle between the president and former Governor Mitt Romney. At 11:18, after some magical swipes by CNN’s John King on their magical election wall, the network declared the President Obama had won the electoral votes he needed to get re-elected. Three minutes earlier, the president declared victory with a signature “-bo” tweet.

Twitter’s @gov team was in full force reporting on the action. Twitter tracked 31 million tweets about the election, “hitting a peak of 327,452 Tweets per minute (TPM),” when the TV networks called that he won. The president made sure to tweet almost an hour before he appeared on television to address the nation. More than 455,000 retweeted his “Four more years” tweet, containing a somewhat awkward picture of him and the first lady.

 

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