Politics

Despite Absence, Trump Dominates Twitter Conversation During Debate

Alexa Santry Contributor
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While presidential candidate Donald Trump was not present at the Republican debate Thursday night, he was still the most mentioned candidate on Twitter.

Trump refused to attend the debate hosted by Fox News because of his ongoing disputes with moderator Megyn Kelly. Despite Trump’s physical absence on the stage he was still quite present on social media.

According to a Twitter analysis of the debate, Trump led the pack of GOP candidates, being mentioned in 36 percent of the tweets surrounding the debate. [crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore] was the candidate who was second most mentioned, however Cruz was a significant 20 percent behind Trump, at 16 percent. [crscore]Marco Rubio[/crscore] came in third and was mentioned in 13 percent of the Twitter debate conversation.

Facebook surveyed which of the debate candidates present was mentioned the most, and found Cruz dominated Facebook with 41 percent of the discussion. In response, a Trump spokesperson told The Hill, “If [Trump] had participated and been included in the list, he would have ranked number one with twice as many people talking about him as Cruz.”

Instead of appearing in the debate, Trump held a fundraising event that he wrote on Twitter raised $6 million dollars for veterans, “while the politicians talked.”

On Friday morning Trump acknowledged the Twitter breakdown of candidates mentioned during the debate and tweeted, “Great Twitter poll- and I wasn’t even there. Thank you!”