Thursday night's vice presidential debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan drew a multitude of online responses through social media. The event led to 4 million tweets, 6 million less than last week's first presidential debate, Twitter reported.
According to Twitter, of the 4 million tweets sent, 26 percent focused on foreign policy, 21 percent on the economy and 16 percent focused on taxes. The debate was on par with the Republic National Convention, which also garnered 4 million tweets, but was beat out by the Democratic National Convention (9.5 million tweets) and the first presidential debate (10 million tweets).
Twitter reported that the most Tweeted-about moments of the debate included: Biden's "Now you're Jack Kennedy?"; Ryan's "They got caught with their hand in the cookie jar turning Medicare into a piggy bank for Obamacare."; and Biden's discussion of the timeline for leaving Afghanistan. Biden's comment drew the largest amount of tweets per minute, at 58,275.
By Friday morning, #VPDebate, #Biden and Martha Raddatz continued to trend nationwide.
Similarly to last week's debate, the moderator-in this case Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent for ABC Martha Raddatz-was at the center of discussion on Twitter. However, unlike Jim Lehrer, Raddatz received acclaim for her work as moderator.
Actress and advocate, Eva Longoria, who also works for the Obama re-election campaign, tweeted, "Marth Raddatz is best moderator ever!!!" However, not everyone hopped on the Raddatz bandwagon. Many conservative accused the moderator of blatant biased towards Biden, given her friendship with President Barack Obama.
Another topic of discussion was Biden's use of the word "malarkey," which Biden used while addressing Ryan. He told the Representative, "with all due respect that's a bunch of malarkey." The buzzword generated over 30,000 tweets and a host of memes. The word, which caused as much hype as last week's Big Bird, also led to a parody account called @MalarkyJoe. The account, which by Friday had sent out over 800 tweets, amassed over 30,000 followers.
Over on Facebook, CNN found that Biden received a massive boost in mentions, over 9,600 percent boost, since the previous day. Ryan also trended on the site, with over a 2000 percent boost from the previous day.
Last night's debate at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky between the two vice presidential hopefuls will be the only vice presidential debate. Two more debates between President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney are scheduled for this month.
The next debate, at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., is scheduled for October 16. The last presidential debate of the season will be held on October 22 at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida.
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