Night of the Texans as Ron Paul Duels Rick Perry

The GOP debate last night at the Reagan Library in California came down to a duel between the two Texans, Ron Paul and Rick Perry. Forget the pundits and analysis, here is how it scored on Facebook.

We counted Facebook followers for the candidates at noon on Wednesday and again on noon Thursday, to see how many new followers might have been attracted by the debate performance and coverage.

Candidate	Wed Noon	Thu Noon	Pickup
Ron Paul	495,011	497,643	2,632
Rick Perry	148,846	151,275	2,429
Mitt Romney	1,100,647	1,102,028	1,381
Herman Cain	171,512	172,534	1,022
Jon Huntsman	15,257	16,270	1,013
Newt Gingrich	146,042	146,512	470
Rick Santorum	27,009	27,158	149
Michele Bachmann	462,347	462,184	-163

Rick Perry is supposed to be the new entrant who is gaining momentum, and he certainly picked up some followers. But the real surge is Ron Paul, who finished second at the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa last month, and won this debate at least on Facebook.

Michele Bachmann, queen for a day at Ames, has stalled. She actually lost followers during the debate day. Mitt Romney continues to roll along, but clearly the man who is still the front-runner on Facebook faces a challenge from two Texans, not just one.

Ron Paul is also pummeling Rick Perry with this ad for being a cheerleader for Al Gore back in 1988:



Ron Paul is getting under Rick Perry's skin. You can see that in this picture of Rick putting his hand on Ron's while waving his finger in Ron's face.

By comparison, Barack Obama picked up 16,007 followers on Facebook in our 24 hour window. So he's not sweating this debate as he prepares for his big speech tonight.