Romney Leads the Social-Media Pack Heading Into New Hampshire

 Tired of talking heads and politicians promising the moon?  Aren't we all, but at least the race for the GOP Presidential nomination is heating up and getting a bit more interesting now that the occasional epithets have started to fly.

We thought it would be interesting to ignore the paid pollsters and prognosticators and see what the average tweeters and posters were saying about the race.

Surprise!  They're saying about the same thing as the pollsters and prognosticators -- namely, that Mitt Romney holds the lead going into New Hampshire, with Rick Santorum close behind and Gingrich having taken a wrong turn somewhere over, oh, Ohio.

We conducted a computerized sentiment analysis of more about 1.5 million comments posted over the last year on Twitter, Facebook and so forth.  This isn't a scientific poll, isn't a representative sample and some of the commenters may have commented more than once, so don't take it to the bank.

Slow and somewhat steady

Presumed front-runner Mitt Romney is just about back where he started a year ago, which isn't a bad thing (for him, anyway), according to 710,000 comments  we found.  He started the year with a net positive sentiment of nearly 60%, dipped into nowheresville for most of the year but climbed back to 49% heading into his Iowa victory.

Attributes attributed to Romney basically come down to his perceived ability to win the Iowa caucus, win the nomination and defeat Obama in November.

A wild ride

Rick Santorum has had the wildest ride of any of the top three, perhaps not surprising since he is a relative newcomer to the national stage. Santorum, who generated only about 220,000 comments, started the year in the low 30% positive range, dipped to -23% in July and is in the high 30s heading into New Hampshire.

Santorum still suffers from the loss of his Senate seat, leaving many who might otherwise support him fearing that he could not prevail against Obama, who has proven his abilities on the stump.

Flat-lined

Whatever you may say about Gingrich, he generates a lot of heat and sometimes burns himself in the process.  We found about 530,000 comments about him online with peaks and valleys that would make New Hampshire's White Mountains look flat. Unforunately for Newt, the peaks are in his past and he is now stranded on the plains, having fallen to a new net Newt sentiment of roughly zero from his peak of 49% in October.

Gingrich is seen as the "perfect candidate" by a hefty percentage of commenters but suffers from the perception that he could not win the general election and from somewhat shopworn tales about his personal life.

Alternate definition

Of the three, Romney and Gingrich enjoy the benefits -- or suffer the consequences, depending on your point of view -- of having been in the national spotlight for years, while Santorum is a newcomer. 

As the primary battles heat up, and assuming Santorum continues to do well, more and more prospective voters are likely to take to the Internet to learn more about Santorum. 

If one simply Googles Santorum's name, one of the first links that presents itself leads to a blog called Spreading Santorum, which presents an alternate definition of "santorum," one that we cannot repeat here.  Google it for yourself if you must.

Internet lore has it that the site was put together after Santorum vigorously expressed his feelings about homosexuality. For voters who have trouble recognizing satire (quite a few in our experience), it could cause problems for the straight-laced Pennsylvanian.