The Most Tweeted Political Event Ever Happened Last Night- What Did You Miss?

Oct. 4, 2012 — -- Even if you weren't tuned in to your TV, it was impossible not to pay attention to the presidential debate that took place last night in Denver, Colorado.

Social media feeds were inundated with images, quotes and memes from what was happening on the floor. So much so that the debate was the most tweeted political event ever, topping both the Democratic National Convention the Republican National Convention, which received 9.5 million and four million total tweets respectively.

The official hashtag monitored by Twitter was #Debates, and according to the press release by the social platform, the 90-minute event generated more than 10.3 million tweets.

Twitter provided a handy graph tracking tweets and gave a play-by-play statistical review of the night:

"The most-tweeted moment came shortly before 10 p.m. EDT, with 158,690 tweets being sent in a single minute following moderator Jim Lehrer's "Let's not" reply to Governor Romney. This peak was more than three times the roughly 52,000 tweets-per-minute political record observed at the end of President Barack Obama's convention speech," the statement said.

There were other hashtags being used to generate conversation around the debate. We were using #Debate2012, which had more than 98,000 tweets overall.

The big winners -- or should we call them losers? -- of the night were Big Bird and Jim Lehrer. Both got a parody account created after Romney mentioned them in his opening speech. "I'm sorry, Jim. I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too," said Romney last night.

Big Bird's account has been tweeting images of him looking for jobs and with signs that read 'Will work for food' while Jim Lehrer's account is a constant stream of 'uhms' and '…' parodying the lack of control some think he had over the debate.

Even actor Jeff Daniels jumped in to the Twitter fun last night, invoking his character in HBO's show 'The Newsroom' saying, "If any of the Moderators are unable to moderate the upcoming Presidential Debates, Will MacAvoy is available."

My personal favorite meme is this image which shows President Obama with Governor Romney's hair and vice versa. They both look kind of Dominican.

For a recap of the best tweets of the night check out this Storify.

Overall, who do you think won the debate both online and offline: President Barack Obama or Governor Mitt Romney?