On X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, it’s Vivek Ramaswamy — not Ron DeSantis — that most states are excited about before and after Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate.
Sports wagering site BetOnline mapped geotagged data from X over the past 24 hours, tracking hashtags of the eight Republican candidate who participated in the debate — #Vivek2024, #DeSantis2024 and #Pence2024, for example — in every state.
More than 100,000 X posts were tracked. The resultant map shows Ramaswamy is the most popular among all GOP presidential candidates not including Donald Trump, who skipped the debate.
Ramaswamy earned the most attention in 27 states, as opposed to just 17 for Florida’s Governor.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley notched both her home state and North Carolina. Former Vice President Mike Pence did the same with his home state of Indiana and Mississippi.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie only captured the attention of the states where they were born, raised and took elected office.
Meanwhile, neither U.S. Sen. Tim Scott nor former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson proved popular enough on the platform to “win” any state.
The surging popularity on X of Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, tracks with recent national polls showing him rising in esteem among the GOP electorate while DeSantis stagnates.
That includes figures from two polls released last week that placed Ramaswamy behind Trump, the field’s dominating but legally compromised frontrunner, with DeSantis slipping to third in the race.
A post-debate poll released Thursday also shows the two in a statistical tie, with registered GOP voters who watched the two-hour telecast giving Ramaswamy’s onstage performance a single percentage point higher grade than DeSantis.
Poll-aggregating site FiveThirtyEight shows DeSantis polling at 15%, Ramaswamy at 10% and Trump dominating with close to 52% support as of Thursday.
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