Justin Trudeau takes Twitter and Google; Stephen Harper remains Facebook champ

While it may be difficult to pick an overallwinner of Thursday night's first federal electiondebate, in the Twitterverseat least, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was a clear victor.

That is, if you define victory in terms of leader mentions.

The same could be said over on Google, where again Trudeauwon the night basedonsearch interest.

However, on Facebook,Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, who had dominated theconversation before the debate, continued to dominate theconversationduring it.

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What this means for a leader's popularity is difficult to determined, as a mere mention alone could be either positive or negative.

"We don't look at it in terms of wins or losses. What we want to show is that there are very seriousconversationsonFacebook, political conversations," saidKevin Chan, head of public policy forFacebookCanada.

It also shows that social media is playing an increasingly active and important role in the popular discussion aroundthis year's election.

For example,Canadian politicalchatteron Twitteroverthe last fouryears has increased 423 per cent,said Mark Blevis,an Ottawa-baseddigital analyst who is helping track trends on Twitter this election campaign.

More than 220,000 tweets were sent out about the debate, according to Twitter Canada. Andbetween the actual debate hours of 8 p.m.ET to 10 p.m. ET, 93,000 tweets were issued, Blevis said.Meanwhile,55,000 Twitter accounts wereinvolved in debate-related chatter.

Who is Thomas Mulcair?

During the debate,Trudeauwasthe most mentioned leader by Twitter handle (11,847), with Green Party LeaderElizabeth May following closely (10, 956). Harper, by contrast, earned8,776 mentions with NDP Leader TomMulcairlast with 6,381 mentions.

But May did win what might be considered one of the more important social media victories she picked up 3,300 new Twitter followers over a 36-hour period, more than any other candidate.

Blevissaid the political parties make use of Twitter to get out information about differentissues.The Liberals, he said, were particularly effective at using to Twitter to tweet outfact-checkingofstatements made by the other leaders.

Over on Google, Harper had been generatingthe most search interests, before being toppled by Trudeau during the debate.

"It's worth pointing out this is not a poll, this is search interest," said Aaron Brindle, a spokesman for Googleand aGoogle trends expert.

"Peoplego online to goseek allkindsof clarification, context, to fact-check, there's a number of different scenarios in which someone could be searching for Justin Trudeau," Brindle notes.

"That said, he wonthe night almost from the get-go from 8 p.m. all the way to 10 p.m. Searches for Justin Trudeauoutpaced Stephen Harper onaverage by around64 per cent, and outpaced Thomas Mulcairby a slightly larger margin, but not much."

Although Mulcair finished third, one of the top trending questions on debate night was:Who is Thomas Mulcair?

"That is interesting because we don't have thesamekind of questions for Stephen Harper or Justin Trudeau," Brindle said."And both ofthose leaders outpace searches for their respectiveparties by quite a large margin, whereit's theopposite scenario for Mulcairwhere searches for NDP outpaces searches for Thomas Mulcair."

As for top trending Googlequestions, those included:

• Did Canadahave a surplus before Harper?
• Is Canada in arecession?
• Who does JustinTrudeauconsider to be middle class?
• Does ThomasMulcairwant Quebec to separate
• What is the mainrole ofthe Senate?

On Facebook,while Harper was the main topic, Trudeaumaintained his number two spot during the debate, saidChan atFacebook Canada.However Mulcair, who was in third going into the debate, dropped to the fourth position, as May claimed the third spot.

Chan said the most conversationalmoment came at 8:37 p.m of the debatewhenMay madethe point thatgreenhouse gas emissions weregoingdown during the recession (arguing that Harper's government shouldn't take credit for the decrease).

Was that spurt of conversation because of what she said about GHGemission? Chan asks. "Or was itjust that her style seems to have provokedcommentary among Canadianson Facebook?"

The most discussed issue leading up to the debate was, not surprisingly, the economy, followed by governanceand foreign policy. But energy and the environment, which came in at number six pre-debate, shot up to number twoduring it.