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Twitter Launches Political Index: The Twitter Pulse Of The Election

Right now, if you want to know how the country feels about Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, you have to rely on pundits’ intuitions or traditional opinion polls, conducted as they always have been — by phone, over the course of hours or days. There’s no direct way to check the pulse of millions of actual people, simultaneously and directly, second by second.

Twitter is launching a tool today that it says will fill that gap, and sort through the 400 million tweets a day from 140 million active users. Twitter and real-time search engine Topsy are launching the “Twitter Political Index,” a daily assessment of how Twitter feels about Obama and Romney, in an election cycle that’s being played out moment-to-moment on the social service.

Obama’s peak points: May 10: Announcing his support of same-sex marriage; June 28: Supreme Court health care decision.

Romney’s peak points: June 6: The day after Scott Walker survived his recall; June 10: Romney releases ad attacking Obama’s “private sector is doing fine” comment; July 4: It’s the Fourth of July, duh!