If Twitter followers were votes, Newt Gingrich would crush Mitt Romney.
The former Speaker of the House may be trailing in the latest polls, but he's leading Romney in tweeps, 4.5 to 1.
Gingrich had a whopping 1,431,034 followers in the final hours before the voting ended in Florida's primary Tuesday. Romney, a comparatively meager 304,540.
Undoubtedly, Romney's numbers are impressive, in the overall scheme of the Twitter-verse, but Newt's are bordering on Rock Star status.
Holy Hashtag!
OK, if you must rank, neither of them is anywhere near Lady Gaga's absolutely gaga 18 million-plus, or even Shakira's 13 mil and change. Actually, they're not even in the Top 300.
But Newt is ahead of Seth McFarlane in the follower count. And Disney iCarly girl Miranda Cosgrove, the New York Times' techwiz David Pogue, Moby and Fonseca. Heck, he's got half a million more than the New York Knicks' Carmelo Anthony, Tim Tebow and Dr. Phil.
Ricardo Arjona and Chayanne are twit-squeaks next to him. They each barely top 850-grand. (Ah, funny how these numbers can be made to seem puny by comparison to a Twitter Master of Gingrich's proportions.)
Romney doesn't even hit the Top 1,000. He's down below the View's Joy Behar and Sesame Street.
Sesame Street!
Really!
Now, a grain of salt:
If these Twitter followers were votes, Romney could demand a recount. According to the online tech site Gawker, a former Gingrich staffer claims that Newt's campaign hired a firm to pump up his count.
"About 80 percent of those accounts are inactive or are dummy accounts created by various 'follow agencies,' another 10 percent are real people who are part of a network of folks who follow other back and are paying for followers themselves," Gawker reported.
Not to be outdone, Gawker rival site Mashable talked to the folks at the search company PeekYou. Their findings, Mashable wrote, fell in line with Gawker's anonymous staffer's numbers: "... what stood out was the percentage of verifiable humans that follow Newt Gingrich: just 8% of the total."
Whether the followers are real or not, Gingrich (or some staffer. I mean, c'mon, you do know how this works, right?) tweets to them several times a day. And, he seems to think they're real people and not just tweeple -- he keeps asking them for money.
Take a look at @newtgingrich
