[For an update on this topic, see this more recent post]

While most of the media attention is focused on the GOP Presidential Primary, we have a very important GOP primary in Florida for Senator coming up mid-august.  And there’s three main candidates in the running: George LeMieux, Mike McCalister, and Connie Mack.  Let’s take a look at how they’re engaging with Twitter — and how Twitter is engaging back.

First, let’s look at the weekly tweets from each campaign:

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LeMieux and Mack are more or less neck and neck, while McCalister has been much quieter.

Let’s see how this has affected the number of followers each candidate has:

(Click on chart to enlarge)

We can see that Connie Mack is in the lead, with George LeMieux having about two thirds as many, and Mike McCalister having only a little over one fifth the followers of Mack.

So, should we expect the same in mentions — the number of tweets other people send about the candidates?  Following is a one time activity, but mentioning is an ongoing process, and is a true measure of enthusiasm.  Let’s look at that enthusiasm:

(Click on chart to enlarge)

Wow! Connie Mack has a hugely larger engagement with voters on Twitter.  He is pulling way ahead of the others.

Yes, it’s still a long way until August 15th, but let’s not forget that Marco Rubio used Twitter to out flank Charlie Crist 2 years ago.  Crist never engaged in social media effectively, and therefore didn’t see the forces that Rubio was massing there that eventually pushed Crist out of the party.

Each of the three senatorial candidates should think long and hard about their engagement strategy — there’s plenty of time to ramp it up, but you don’t want to wait too long…