Primary day Twitter buzz

June 8, 2010

It’s primary day here in Maine, and voters all around the state are going out to the polls to vote for their favorite candidate. There are lots of predictions and polls being tossed into the mix, but these all rely on old media and actually asking people what they think. Psh. Let’s bring some new media into this race!

Which Maine gubernatorial candidate has generated the most buzz on Twitter today? Here’s a look at how we stand. The yellow area counts unique users on Twitter; the gray counts any additional tweets today from those users. Of note: the three candidates who have engaged with users the most on Twitter generated the largest buzz from unique users today.

Twitter mentions of Maine gubernatorial candidates

The chart above shows tweets from midnight through approximately 6:00 p.m. Eastern time, as reported by the Twitter API. Calculations include mentions of a candidate’s Twitter handle or their full name (including variations where appropriate, for example, “Steve Rowe” and “Steven Rowe”). I headed back to the Google Chart Generator to build this one, too.

Will this reflect the outcome of the race in any way or is just another frivolous statistic? We’ll find out tonight!

UPDATE: I rearranged the bars to show a clearer indication of the differences within each party.