Which U.S. presidential candidate's picture is showing up the most on Twitter? Here's a real-time way to find out.
Our friends at Skylines, the worldwide counter, aggregator and sorter of Twitter photos, put together a real-time Romney vs. Obama page. It shows how many photos over the past week include the words "Romney," "Mitt," "Obama" and "Barack" in their descriptions.
How's it going so far? As you can see in this snapshot we grabbed of the live Twitter photo counter site (click on the graphic or here to go to the live page), Barack Obama is ahead over the past week, seen in 133,857 photos, versus his opponent Mitt Romney, tagged in 94,687:
As next Tuesday's (Nov. 6) election draws nearer, we expect the pace to pick up with pictures mounting up even more furiously, perhaps letting you tap into the Zeitgeist of the moment as you watch the numbers change. Even better, the Skylines site lets you build your own widgets, using whatever topics or keywords you'd like.
There are lots of ways to try to predict who will win the U.S. presidential election, and some of those polling methods are scientific. This isn't one of them. It's also far from the first time people have tried to read the tea leaves to gain insight into who will be the next president of the United States.
For instance, earlier this week we took a look at search frequency on Google, which roughly approximated the movements of presidential election opinion polls. That link will also show you which candidate is winning consumer surveys, getting the most YouTube views, and how much time each candidate spent talking during each of the debates. Or you could see how they're stacking up on Tumblr. Are any of these reliable predictors? Probably not, but we'll see.
Or, we could just take a look at all the latest polls from Ohio, because no Republican has ever been elected president unless he's won that state. One thing's certain: The only poll that really counts is the one on Nov. 6. Vote.