Facebook has figured out a way to survey how often a presidential candidate is mentioned on FB and how many of those posts are positive or negative about the candidate, without invading anyone’s privacy. The social media service has undertaken this project with Politico and the latest update shows that Newt Gingrich is on the rise.
Favorable Facebook chatter about Jon Huntsman spiked on Monday, putting him at the top of the heap, with more than half of the conversation on the positive side.
Since Huntsman dropped out of the race Gingrich — the candidate who has been talked about in the most polarizing terms on Facebook, both positive and negative — saw a dip in people saying negative things about him, according to Politico.
Gingrich has received kudos for performing well in the Fox News/Wall Street Journal debate ahead of South Carolina’s Republican primary on Saturday, and the decrease could have been due to that. But whether the FB chatter was affected by the debate will become clearer as more people are exposed to newspaper stories, online posts and TV broadcasts offering debate highlights.
Meanwhile, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney continue to lead in overall volume of Facebook mentions — including status updates, comments, posts and sharing of information with friends — with Romney scoring 125,000 mentions over the past week, and Paul slightly more than that.
You can see charts that track the Facebook chatter here.
