Twitter Accurately Predicts Romney Victory in New Hampshire Primary

Mitt Romney clinched the New Hampshire primary Tuesday night, falling in line with Twitter’s prediction that the former Massachusetts governor would be the Republican victor.

Mashable recently reached out to Globalpoint Research to analyze Twitter sentiment regarding the primary, and the results gave Romney a slightly higher lead than the latest polls.

The research firm — which used a weighted metric to combine tweet volume and retweets with detailed sentiment analysis — found that Romney would not only have the edge, second place would be a tight call between Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum.

Romney came out on top with 37% of the vote, followed by Paul (23%), Huntsman (17%), Gingrich (10%), Santorum (10%) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (1%).

Romney became the first Republican candidate to win the first two contests since 1976.

Last week, Mashable asked Globalpoint Research if Twitter could predict the Iowa caucus, and although the results weren’t perfect, they called for a much stronger showing by former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum than the national polls projected. After the closest Iowa caucus in American history, Santorum was defeated by a very thin margin.

The concept of Twitter predicting the GOP presidential race is not necessarily new. In fact, according to research revealed in November 2011, political candidates do better in the polls when they gain more Twitter followers. National polls happen all the time but it’s possible to predict when certain candidates will climb in the rankings based the rate they are followed.

Do you think Twitter can predict how well candidates will do in the polls? Why or why not? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.