Ted Cruz Was the Most Tweeted Candidate on Tuesday Night

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I’m not even sure what this means, but it’s a slow news day and I figure a colorful chart might brighten things up. Everyone loves colorful charts, don’t they?

Anyway, a team of wonks from the Monkey Cage has put together a measure of Twitter activity during the Republican debate on Tuesday. Unfortunately, their software chose three shades of teal for three of the candidates, and I sure hope I got them right when I labeled the lines. Ted Cruz was apparently the most talked about by a large margin. This might be due solely to the fact that he got far more talking time than anyone else (13 minutes, vs. 11 minutes for the second-place Donald Trump). Ben Carson was the least talked about, and he also got the least talk time (about 9 minutes).

In any case, by the end of the debate (23:00) the top candidates were Cruz, Kasich, Rubio, and Trump. The other four had all faded to nothing. Oddly, while tweets about most of the candidates ebbed after the debate ended, Cruz continued to take off. His Twitter activity was higher at 11:30 than it was at any time during the debate. Make of this what you will.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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