Record 32 million tweets on US Election Day

Washington: On US Election Day, conversations around the polls totalled 32 million tweets with 23 million tweets sent after the first poll closed, the micro-blogging site said today. And within minutes of clinching victory, @BarackObama's "Four more years" tweet quickly became his most retweeted tweet ever, Twitter said.

Conversation peaked at 327,452 Tweets Per Minute when the broadcast networks in the US called the US President, Barack Obama, winning reelection for a second term--by far the most tweeted moment of #Election2012. Throughout the day, the 'twitterati' world was abuzz with the election-related issues.

By afternoon, average election-related Tweet volume of about 13,000 Tweets per minute (TPM) over the last several hours nearly matched the peak moments of the 2012 State of the Union Address and Republican National Convention. By 2 pm, there were a total of about 6.4 million Tweets since the polls opened in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire at midnight.

Nearly 3,000 Tweets per minute reference "I voted," "#ivoted," or similar terms, with the highest number of Tweets among swing states coming from Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Across the 12 USA Today and Gallup-defined "swing states," nearly 76 per cent of Tweets containing these terms plus a candidate name referenced President Obama.

Domestic policy issues dominate issue-based Tweets nationally, with the top five issue-based conversations focused on: the economy (32 per cent), foreign policy (17 per cent), taxes (14 per cent), energy & the environment (nine per cent), and education (seven per cent).

Taxes emerged as the top-tweeted issue in most swing states, except for Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, where foreign policy was referenced in the majority of issue-related

Tweets. Reversing the trend of recent days, the Obama campaign had received the lion's share of specific mentions, 41 per cent to the Romney camp's 23 per cent.

Nearly 10 per cent of Tweets mention both campaigns, while 23 per cent of election-related Tweets mention none of the candidates or their wives. Obama was also the most talked-about in each of the swing states. By mid-afternoon, the national Twitter Political Index continued to trend upward for both candidates, with each among the most positively-talked about subjects among more than 400 million Tweets sent in the last 24 hours.

In fact, the candidates were essentially tied for several hours in the hourly sample late this morning but still both slightly down for last night's daily track of 66 and 56 for Obama and Romney, respectively, the micro blogging site said.####Tweets about ”barack obama”

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