Election Oracle

Election Oracle: No Bump for Mitt

There’s little love for Mitt Romney online.

While Romney seems poised to use a strong showing in Super Tuesday’s 10 contests to reclaim his mantle of inevitability, the Web has yet to come around to the would-be nominee.

Romney was the only GOP candidate with a negative favorability territory Monday, meaning he generated more negative than positive comments online, according to the Election Oracle. And even as his prospects have rebounded, with the Oracle now giving him a 64 percent chance of eventually claiming being the Republican nomination, Web chatter about him has been largely negative all week.

To determine favorability ratings, the Election Oracle tracks 40,000 news sites, blogs, message boards, Twitter feeds, and other social-media sources to analyze what millions of people are saying about the candidates—and determines whether the Web buzz is positive or negative. That rating is weighted, along with the Real Clear Politics polling average and the latest InTrade market data, to calculate each candidate’s chances of winning the Republican nomination. (See methodology here.)

In the meantime, Newt Gingrich, who’s ceded the anti-Romney mantle in recent contests to Rick Santorum, could be poised for still another surge in his turbulent up-and-down campaign. His favorability score now leads both Santorum and Gingrich, and a win in his home state of Georgia Tuesday would give him momentum going into Southern contests in Mississippi and Alabama a week later.

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