#DemDebate racks up 1.8 million tweets, significantly fewer than the Republican debate

The decline isn’t totally unexpected since the Democratic debate was shorter and had fewer people named Donald Trump on stage, lending itself to fewer “tweetable” moments. But that doesn’t mean people weren’t interested, especially in Internet’s unofficial favorite candidate Bernie Sanders.

Sanders was far and away the most tweeted-about person onstage, raking in 409,000 tweets — more than double that of Hillary Clinton, who generated 166,000 tweets. Gaffe-prone Jim Webb collected 143,000 tweets, Lincoln Chafee had 60,000 tweets and, in last place, Martin O’Malley, who recorded 57,000 tweets.

In terms of the most talked about moments, Sanders was involved in the top two. Data from Brandwatch tracked 12,000 online mentions when he told Clinton that the “American people are sick of hearing about your damn emails,” which led to an appreciative handshake from Clinton.

In the second spot was Sanders’ opening statement, which collected 7,000 tweets. While Webb, who appeared annoyed throughout the night, garnered 5,000 mentions when he reached his boiling point with moderator Anderson Cooper about the allotted answer time.

Overall, the average sentiment toward all of the Democratic candidates were positive at 62 percent, with Sanders being the most warmly received candidate with 69 percent mentions being positive. Clinton was drastically more divisive, with 56 percent of her mentions being positive and only Webb tracked negatively with 47 percent of his mentions being positive.

CNN, which live-streamed the debate on its website and apps, said the number of concurrent viewers peaked at 980,000, topping the Republican Presidential Debate by 60,000 concurrent viewers. Old-fashioned television ratings, also expected to be lower than the Republicans showdown, will be released this afternoon.