One convention down, one to go. Last night in Tampa, Mitt Romney accepted his party’s nomination for President on the United States, and gave a speech that was part indictment of the Obama administration and part trip through memory lane. Though Twitter users have been fervently debating the speech’s delivery and merits – one thing is for certain:
There were a lot of Twitter users watching, on both sides of the political aisle.
According to Twitter, Mitt Romney was responsible for the three biggest spikes in tweets per minute during the night. At a little past 11pm ET, Romney mentioned Russian President Putin, and the Twittersphere lit up to the tune of 13,278 tweets per minute. And then a few minutes laters, as the speech was coming to a close, Romney registered 14,289 tweets per minute.
Although it was clearly Romney’s night to generate conversation, two other speakers grabbed a share of the Twitter buzz as well. Senator Marco Rubio saw a tweets per minute spike of 8,937 during his speech and Clint Eastwood received a spike of 7,044 TPM during his interview of an invisible Obama in an empty chair.
By comparison to Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and Ann Romney’s speeches seem a bit tepid in terms of reaction. They generated 6,669 and 6,195 TPM, respectively.
In all, Twitter says that there were over 4 million RNC-related tweets over the course of the week. Yesterday, there were only 2 million – so the final day generated quite a lot of buzz. The 2012 convention had trumped the 2008 convention in terms of total tweets before the first speaker took the podium on Tuesday.