Iowans have spoken and with all the votes tallied, Mitt Romney — the Republican presidential candidate with more than one million Facebook fans — eked out a victory just ahead of Rick Santorum.
In a surprise nail-biter of a contest, only eight votes separated Romney and Santorum, resulting in a virtual tie.
Ron Paul, who is second only to Romney in Facebook fans, placed a strong third, followed by Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann.
Rick Santorum was the only top-tier candidate to update his Facebook fans around 10 p.m. ET, touting the fact he was locked in a three-way race with Romney and Paul.
Looking at various studies from social media firms and Facebook fan totals, our question is: Did Facebook sentiment help predict the outcome of the voting in Iowa?
From the start of the primary season, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul were first and second in the Facebook fan total race, based on our sister site’s Election Tracker 2012 numbers.
Romney closed out the night with 1,274,695 fans, after getting a big boost in the days leading up to the caucus.
Romney added more than 5,000 fans on caucus day alone–and more than 33,000 in the last week.
Paul was said to have the strongest viral reach of any GOP candidate on Facebook.
But the real story coming out of Iowa is Rick Santorum, whose rise in the polls mirrored his surge in Facebook fans leading up to the first votes in the 2012 campaign. Santorum added more than 1,600 fans today and nearly 5,500 fans in the past week after campaigning in all 99 Iowa counties.
With Iowa over, attention turns to the next contest: The New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, January 9.
The remaining candidates will first battle it out in two Granite State debates this week, including the Facebook/NBC News “Meet the Press” Republican Presidential Debate on Sunday at 9 a.m. Eastern Time.
The debate, held at the Chubb Theater in Concord, NH, will stream from Facebook’s U.S. Politics page and MSNBC.com.
In usual form, Facebookers took to the social media platform to weigh at various points throughout the night.
Lead image courtesy of MSNBC.
