Election lights up Twitter with 75M tweets

The presidential election brought in a wave of Twitter activity on Tuesday with 75 million tweets posted about it around the world.

Twitter reported Wednesday that 75 million election-related tweets were sent between Tuesday morning and 3 a.m. ET on Wednesday, when Republican nominee Donald Trump declared victory.

That’s a big jump from the 2012 presidential election when 31 million related tweets were posted on Election Day.

In what some have hailed as the "Twitter Election," the Democratic and Republican campaigns, and users in the U.S. and around the world have used the social network to tweet about policy issues and campaign points, as well as to retweet memes, political support and jabs.

Before Tuesday, Americans had posted 1 billion tweets about the election since August 2015 when the first Republican debates were held.

Twitter showed that election-related tweets spiked between 11 p.m. ET and 1 a.m. as results came in showing Trump winning the states needed for a surprise upset over his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Another spike hit at 3 a.m. when Trump claimed victory.

Clinton’s last tweet on Tuesday was her second most-retweeted, according to Twitter.

The candidate had tweeted thanks to her supporters, writing, “This team has so much to be proud of. Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything.” As of 1 p.m. today, it was liked more than 330,000 times and retweeted more than 130,000 times.

Twitter

By Wednesday morning, Trump, who has used Twitter as one of his biggest, if not more challenging, political tools, had already changed his Twitter biography to reflect that he now is president elect.

In his first tweet in that role, Trump wrote Wednesday morning: “Such a beautiful and important evening! The forgotten man and woman will never be forgotten again. We will all come together as never before.” The tweet received more than 400,000 likes and was retweeted more than 170,000 times.

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