to Iowa Caucuses penultimate tweeting

The final push -- penultimate tweeting

January 2 dawned with only one more day before the Iowa caucuses. First, the change in the number of messages per day posted about the seven candidates.

It was a very large jump from December 26 to January 2. The number of messages on the 26th was 47,757. The number on January 2 was 156,413. In only a few days there was a three-fold increase in the messages posted about the candidates. And a little bit of holiday celebration on the 31st and 1st.

The number of messages mentioning each of the candidates increased from January 1 to January 2 -- though some increased more than others and some increased less.

The 'also rans' continued to be also ran.

The Huntsman surge was from 352 messages posted to 709. Only once have there been more than a thousand messages mentioning Huntsman. Bachmann is still leading Perry. While messages mentioning each went up -- the increase for Bachmann was more substantial than the increase for Perry. He is advertising like crazy, but it does not seem to be paying off.

The 'newsmakers'

Surges all around. Gingrich's surge depended on the low of January 1. If not for that low it would not be a surge at all. He is not yet down to also ran status, but it is hard to see 'progress' in these numbers. He is already 'old news.'

Romney and Ron Paul were approximately equal on January 1 and they stayed almost equal on the 2nd. The number for Ron Paul is an estimate, which is explained below. Forty thousand messages a day is not trivial; it is five to seven times 'normal.' But Santorum surged past them to 47,320. After a very long period of 'neglect' Santorum is finally getting attention. For most of the campaign only Huntsman was mentioned less frequently than Santorum. He has been the 'hang in there' candidate. But peaking at the right moment.

It would be good to put these numbers into prespective. Two dominant political figures who are not in these tables are Obama and Palin. On January 1 there were 61,377 Twitter messages mentioning Obama and there were 71,151 on the 2nd. Many days during the campaign the number of messages mentioning Obama exceeded the total number of messages for all the Republican candidates. Presidents are first in attention. Palin, on the other hand, has slowly receded. The number of messages mentioning Palin was 2,822 on the first an 4,438 on the second.

January 3 is the day attention will be turned into votes. The conversion should be interesting.

Methodological note

The search for messages mentioning Ron Paul 'died' for five hours on January 2. It was not operating between 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. To get an estimate of his total for the day I divided the total collected by the 19 hours the search was operating to get messages per hour. I multiplied that by 5 for the hours missing and added that to the total collected. The period missing is normally one of the high points for the day so there were probably more messages than suggested by looking at the full 19 hours. This is an estimate. I believe it is a conservative estimate. I believe the number would have been somewhat higher if the collection had not stopped.