In 2012, democrat Patrick Murphy narrowly defeated Allen West by less than 2500 votes to take Florida’s 18th congressional district, and he’s looking to repeat his victory this year in the mid-term elections.  But the closeness of the vote has encouraged a large pool of republican contenders, each who feel that without West’s baggage they could switch the district from D to R.

An early look at the race shows us that, on Twitter at least, all the buzz is around two candidates: the incumbent Murphy and the challenger Calvin Turnquest:

Twitter mentions in FL-18 – Click to Enlarge

The other GOP contenders have plenty of time to ramp up their social media presence, but it is my observations that Mr. Turnquest has a natural fluency with social media that may be hard for them to surpass.  Given how close the last election was, it would do the GOP good to pick a candidate who can reach voters in all channels, and until the others demonstrate a core competency in Social Media, on just the mechanics of politics Mr. Turnquest looks like an early leader.