Post-Election 2012: Map Locates The Most Racist Tweets After President Obama's Re-Election (Map)

Southern states Alabama and Mississippi hold the record for the highest level of racist tweets surrounding the election a new map by website Floating Sheep revealed.

The two states, along with several other states throughout the US, experienced a surge in racist tweets after President Barack Obama was re-elected on Tuesday. The website, which is run by geography professors and researchers, analyzed the amount of racist tweets from each state and compared it to the total number of tweets in that state.

The website used, what it called "location quotient inspired measure (LQ)" to indicate each state's level of racist tweets to normal tweets.

It then rated each state, with a score of 1.0 indicating an equal amount of hate speech tweets as the normal amount of tweets. In a blog post describing their discoveries, Dr. Matthew Zook explained, "Scores above 1.0 indicate that hate speech is more prevalent than all tweets, suggesting that the state's 'twitterspace' contains more racists post-election tweets than the norm."

The study found that many southern states experienced a surge of racist tweets following President Obama's re-election. Alabama, which scored an LQ measurement of 8.1, and Mississippi, which scored a 7.4, experienced the most hate speech tweets. However, hate speech tweets were not bound to the south.

Zook wrote that North Dakota, Utah and Missouri also scored high LQs. According to the study, "The Northeast and West coast (with the exception of Oregon) have a relatively lower number of hate tweets."

To map the data, Zook and his fellow researchers made a color-coded map, which shows which have higher states, the LA Times explained. The darker green the state was colored, the higher its score. Those colored grey had no geocoded hate tweets. These include: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota and Rhode Island.

"But lest anyone else become too complacent, the unfortunate face is that most states are not immune from this kind of activity," Zook said. "Racist behavior, particularly directed at African Americans in the U.S., is all too easy to find both offline and in information space."