While the focus on the Super Bowl will continue this week, I thought that, as Florida finishes voting, the ever-changing sentiment of voters in this election year offers a really interesting comparison between polling/research and social media monitoring.

Thanks to NetBases’ monitoring we can portray the national social media trends for the two major Republican candidates (see below).  Clearly, there are two trends:  Newt Gingrich has been surging while Mitt Romney’s negatives have been growing.  The national social media sentiment through January 25th (shown below) would indicate a Newt victory Tuesday.  Of course, Newt’s weak performance in the last debate and the fact that this social media data is national, rather than based solely on Florida,  provide the rationale for the expected Romney victory tomorrow.

Either way, the social media monitoring on a national level looks a lot more stable than the national polls have been over the same period.  Come November, we may have a good test of which way to “measure” is more valid for elections.