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 The fourth televised debate for the Republicans hosted by Fox
Business Network had more people talking about it online than the
third debate hosted by its older and bigger rival CNBC two weeks
ago. The Tuesday night debate ranked in an average of 13.5 viewers,
setting a record for the eight-year-old network.
The U.S. senator from Texas, considered a mid-tier candidate in
terms of his standing in opinion polls, had the highest social media
sentiment analysis score of 11 as well as the highest number of
mentions on Twitter during the debate, according to Thomson Reuters
data.
He topped Republican front-runners Donald Trump, who scored 3.3,
fourth in the social media rankings, and Ben Carson, who scored
negative 6.7 and came in fifth, for the first time since the 2016
presidential campaign season kicked off this year. A score above 0
means there are more positive mentions on Twitter about a candidate
than negative ones.
Cruz also went into the debate with the most positive social media
sentiment score among the eight candidates who took the stage in
Milwaukee for the debate televised on the Fox Business Network.
 Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, another mid-tier candidate, also
rose to the top ranks on social media with a score of 6.5, third in
the rankings, according to a Thomson Reuters social media sentiment
analysis tool. The tool tracks and aggregates social media mentions
of candidates to generate a score based on the ratio of positive
versus negative mentions.
SHINING MOMENTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
One of the most tweeted Cruz moments involved his answer when asked
about his desire to raise the retirement age and reduce benefits for
future retirees: "I don't think we should be pushing any grannies
off cliffs."
An intense argument over tax code and military spending by Rubio,
Paul and Cruz in the second hour of the debate was also one of the
most shared moments, according to data by Twitter.
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Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky stole the spotlight in the last hour
of the debate when he corrected Trump, pointing out that China is
not part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact. Paul's
social media sentiment score jumped from negative to positive,
giving him an end score of 8.1, just behind Cruz.
Carson, however, had the most-liked social media post of all
candidates: An image of himself and his granddaughter having
"pre-debate time" that got more than 171,300 likes on Facebook,
according to technology data company Engagement Labs.
But the most-shared tweets of the night came not from accounts
linked to the GOP candidates, but from Democratic presidential
candidate Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders).
His tweet targeting Trump - "We already have the biggest military in
the world, yet veterans sleep out on the streets. Will Republicans
talk about this? #GOPDebate" - had more 4,000 retweets and 5,000
likes on Wednesday.
There were about 1.5 million mentions that included hashtag
#GOPdebate on Tuesday on Twitter, nearly double the amount seen on
the day of the CNBC debate, according to Thomson Reuters analysis of
Twitter.
(Additional reporting Melissa Fares; Data complied by Connie Yee,
Thomson Reuters F&R and Armineh Nourbakhsh, Armineh, Thomson Reuters
R&D; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
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