“Obama is wiping the floor with Romney.”

“Romney is wiping the floor with Obama.”

Variants of these statements were being posted all over the microblogging platform Twitter during the second presidential debate of October 16. To assess the overall pattern of such statements, I’ve scraped all tweets containing the text “wiping the floor with” from Twitter during tonight’s debate. Here’s what I found:

Of Twitter users using the phrase “wiping the floor with” during the debate, 72.2% indicated that Barack Obama was wiping the floor with Mitt Romney; only 27.8% indicated that Romney was wiping the floor with Obama.

The following is a network graph (generated through social media engine NodeXL) of the tweets making up that set. Each Twitter account is a dot in this image, and an arrow heads from one account to another when a communication between accounts using the phrase “wiping the floor with” occurs:

Most people who Tweeted sentiments about “wiping the floor” during the debate just posted their thoughts, not sharing them with other accounts. With one exception, those conversing agreed with one another. The one exception consisted of some strong disagreement with a Twitter post claiming “Romney is wiping the floor with Obama.” Respondents wrote back, not hiding their scorn: “You are mentally ill”…”U must be watching a different debate..he’s not!”…”u smokin crack while ur watchin the debate”…”you sound crazy cuz”…”This guy smh”…”What??? You gotta b watchin the wrong shyt”…”You’re using reverse psychology right? O.o”…”Alternate Universe debate?”