Bluefin Labs has again provided us with some great data on last night’s GOP debate on CNN. The debate accepted questions from audience members as well as questions submitted via Twitter, which were displayed on-air leading into each commercial. “Mass Relevance powered the on-air tweets, which extended onto the commercials to keep users engaged.
Bluefin Labs says the Twitter integration may have helped drive up total comments (second highest number of comments since the debate on September 7). To the infographic, followed by some commentary by Bluefin:
Peaks in trendline resulted from the below issues:
(a) 8:25pm (1st peak on the trendline) – Rick Santorum says he supports profiling at airports and Cain follows up with his own term for profiling, which he called “target identification.” (e.g., “Racial profiling is a good idea. -Rick Santorum“)
(b) 9:00pm (2nd peak on the trendline) – Ron Paul says “we aren’t cutting anything” in response to Romney saying Congress is cutting programs that are cutting America’s ability to defend itself. Commenters seemed to agree with Paul (e.g., “Please just check out what #ronpaul has to say. Let’s stop being world police. Live and let live…no victim no crime“)
(c) 9:25pm (3rd peak on the trendline) – Ron Paul chimes in again on the topic for Drug violence on the border and basically says this is another war that needs to be cancelled because it has been a complete failure to date. Another topic that commenters agreed with Paul on (e.g., “RT @MichaelSkolnik: “Drug war, that is another war we should cancel” ~Ron Paul #SpeakTruthToPower“)
(e) 9:50pm (4th peak on the trendline) – Ron Paul said “Why don’t we mind our own business” in reference to what should be done about terror threats in Somalia. Commenters were generally in agreement with what Paul was saying in the debate last night (e.g., “RT @annas227: The War Propaganda is on tonight. You’re hitting it out of the park #RonPaul!“)
Most talked about topics as depicted in the word cloud:
1. Immigration
2. Africa (A question asked about spending billions to fight AIDS and malaria in Africa prompted Rick Santorum to say, “Africa was a country on the brink,” sparking social media chatter about the gaffe.)
3. Iran
4. War
Most talked about candidates as depicted in the word cloud:
1. Ron Paul
2. Mitt Romney
3. Jon Huntsman
4. Michele Bachmann
5. Rick Santorum
6. Newt Gingrich
7. Herman Cain
8. Rick Perry