Last night’s Presidential debate put a keystone into the political debate season. The third and final showdown lacked the fireworks of previous debates, but continued election season’s dramatic presence on the social web. Check out our data from the AddThis network on the major moments and trends from our analysis of social mentions during the debate. Social mentions are a measure of online sharing, social referrals and searches related to specific content.

Social Analysis

Social activity during the first debates took place on Twitter exclusively. By the last debate Facebook was the dominant social network. For Barack Obama related content, Reddit shot up to the 3rd spot for most popular social network.

Top Social Moments

The top social moments of the evening took place in the post-debate recap related to China and Iran.



The most shared moment related to Barack Obama’s came at 9:56PM ET right after he talked about the unprecedented cooperation with Israel on deterring Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Romney’s top moment came at 10:24PM ET as the debate wrapped up and he hammered home how the country can’t afford 4 more years of high unemployment and increasing debt.

And the winner for most online social mentions is…

While the map looks very red, Obama edged out Romney social mentions by 1.5%. Obama continues to dominate the conversation in Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Iowa, all swing states.

Just because debate season is over doesn’t mean we’ll stop our data analysis. Check back over the next two weeks to learn more about how the election is playing out in social media and social interest.