Stat of the Week Winner: November 10 – 16 2012

Thanks for the nominations last week for our Stat of the Week competition! This week we’ve chosen the winner to be Scott Donaldson for his nomination:

“I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who noticed this. Stuff reported “Mitt Romney’s fall from social-media grace” with a grossly misrepresenting graph.

A glance at the graph seems to imply that Mitt suffered a dramatic drop in his number of ‘likes’. The accompanying commentary also made this interpretation. A detailed look reveals an entirely different picture.

Romney’s number of likes in fact dropped by a very modest 0.1% over the two hour period when it became apparent that he was not going to be president.

Perhaps the story should have reported the resoluteness of his supporters in the face of defeat.

The story originated at the social media website Mashable and at DisappearingRomney.com. LikeLoss.com tracks the percentage of likes lost since election result. It’s currently at a mere 1.23%.