Last week’s first Presidential debate broke a Twitter record. With over 10 million total tweets coming in from start to finish, it became the most tweeted-about event in U.S. politics. Could the Vice Presidential debate live up to that sort of social media chatter?
Not quite. But it did draw an impressive crowd.
Twitter confirms that last night’s VP debate garnered 3.5 million total tweets from the beginning to the end. When the time is not a factor, 4 million tweets were sent out concerning Joe Biden and Paul Ryan’s contest.
According to Twitter, 26% of those tweets concerned foreign policy, 21% were about the economy, and 16% specifically dealt with the topic of taxes. Twitter also highlights the top moments of the debate in terms of “tweets per minute.” Biden’s “Now you’re Jack Kennedy?” quip won the night with a spike of 58,275 TPM. Paul Ryan’s statement that “they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar turning Medicare into a piggybank for Obamacare” came in second, with 55,540 TPM.
Twitter also identifies the winning buzzword of the night. Unsurprisingly, it was “malarkey.”
If you missed last night’s Vice Presidential debate, you can watch it in its entirety below: