President Obama’s DNC speech sets new Twitter politics record with 52,757 tweets per minute

During his speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, US President Barack Obama hit a new record for political moments on Twitter by inspiring 52,757 tweets per minute (TPM).

Twitter’s Government & Politics team announced the new record not long after Obama finished, noting that over 9.5 million tweets had been sent about the convention, with over 4 million coming in the final day. That compares to statistics from the Republican convention of 4 million total tweets and a peak tweet-per-minute rate of 14,289 for candidate Mitt Romney.

A new record political moment on Twitter: @barackobama drives 52,757 Tweets per minute. Over 9 million Tweets sent about #DNC2012.

— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) September 7, 2012

A subsequent blog post from Twitter outlined some of the most popular moments from the President’s speech and their respective TPM counts:

-43,646: “I’m no longer just the candidate, I’m the President”
-39,002: “I will never turn medicare into a voucher”
-38,597: Discussing Medicare
-37,694: “We don’t think government can solve all our problems…”
-34,572: Quips about the Olympics and “Cold War mind warp”

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Vice President Joe Biden reached a peak of 17,932 TPM during his speech earlier in the evening. Former president Bill Clinton topped 22,000 TPM during his speech on Wednesday, and First Lady Michelle Obama had a max TPM of 28,003.

With Twitter continuing to grow at a rapid rate – stats revealed in March, showed 140 million users send 340 tweets per day – it seems likely that this record will be challenged as the President race heats up, with the microblogging service acting as a key communications channel.

Last month, Twitter created an influence index for the US presidential campaign. Coasting off the momentum of the Democratic convention on Thursday, Obama ranked 52, compared to Romney’s 9.

Obama has turned to the Internet and social media for help in his reelection campaign. He hosted an “Ask Me Anything” Q&A on Reddit last week, bringing in record traffic of 4.4 million page views and 1.6 million unique visitors to the site. He also recently resumed posting to his personal Foursquare profile.