Twitter Poll: GOP Primary -- Week Ending 11/5/2011

Everyone was talking about Cain this week:

Meanwhile, Newt continued his climb into the lead pack:

And Perry's slow decline continued all week:

The mention space is complicated by the harassment scandal dogging Cain. The scandal may prove to be a net positive in the long run (in the primaries), but I have no doubt that significant portions of Cain mentions this week were "negative" mentions. (I also suspect that negative mentions may not have been reliably distinguishable from positive mentions by off-the-shelf sentiment analysis.)

Paradoxically, the Cain story has been so dominant in the past week that the mention space visualization may tell us more about the positioning of the candidates than usual.

Rick Santorum, like Ron Paul, is isolated from mainstream networks. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand,  is well positioned to see a surge of support in the weeks or months to come. Rick Perry has faded into the background with Michele Bachmann. Romney sits behind Gingrich and Cain, steady but uninspiring.