Rick Santorum sets new 2012 Election Twitter record on Super Tuesday

Rick Santorum, second place candidate in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries set a new 2012 Election Twitter record with almost 40,000 tweets referencing him between 6pm and 7pm PT, yesterday, Super Tuesday.

The previous highest candidate Twitter spike belongs to Newt Gingrich, currently third, on the day he won the South Carolina Primary.

With 10 states to be won, Super Tuesday was always going to spark great conversation on Twitter. The volume of tweets increased sharply as the first results were reported, with subsequent spikes for each individual candidate as they made televised addresses.

Rick Santorum was by far the most successful candidate on Twitter by number of references, peaking at just under 40,000 per hour. Mitt Romney came in second at a little over 28,000 tweets per hour, Newt Gingrich at just under 17,000 and Ron Paul at 6,000 tweets per hour.

Although Rick Santorum won on Twitter, Mitt Romney secured six out of 10 states. Rick Santorum took three, while Newt Gingrich took his first primary victory since South Carolina. Crucially, Mitt Romney won Ohio, but only just.

Interestingly, as often happens on Twitter, the top retweeted Super Tuesday related tweets were mostly funny ones. Like these,

The #Romney family misspells its own name in the world’s most epic Freudian slip. twitter.com/alexqgb/status…

— Alex Bowles (@alexqgb) March 6, 2012

Please Note: America needs Secret Service protection from Rick Santorum, not the other way around.

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) March 6, 2012

Poll: Given Choice Between Romney and Santorum, Most Voters Choose Suicide: bit.ly/z2ZevY #SuperTuesday

— Andy Borowitz (@BorowitzReport) March 6, 2012