Rick Santorum might not have won last night as America went to the polls for Super Tuesday as Mitt Romney won six out of 10 states, including the crucial Ohio, but he proved his sticky power in social media remains as he set a new record on Twitter.

It suggests once again that the 2012 presidential race will be the Twitter election.

According to Twitter the data surprise of the night was the  conversation on Twitter about @RickSantorum as he battled in a tight race in Ohio against @MittRomney.

Santorum spiked far higher than any of the other candidates and in just the hour between 6pm and 7pm PT there were nearly 40,000 Tweets referencing @RickSantorum setting a new 2012 Election Twitter record. Twitter’s previous highest candidate spike belonged to Newt Gingrich, on the day he won the South Carolina Primary.

However, according to the Twitter blog while the data tells one part of the of the story, the Tweets tell another and throughout the day most of the top retweeted Super Tuesday Tweets were the funny ones.

You know that warm, tingly feeling you get when your foot falls asleep? That’s how I feel about Mitt.

— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) March 6, 2012

The #Romney family misspells its own name in the world’s most epic Freudian slip. twitter.com/alexqgb/status… — Alex Bowles (@alexqgb) March 6, 2012

Poll: 63% Of Americans Say They Have A Problem With A Mormon President Who Is Also Mitt Romney onion.com/yjudnl

— OnionPolitics (@OnionPolitics) March 6, 2012

From yesterday: It’s going to be a busy night on Twitter in US tonight as Super Tuesday rolls around. It is the day when voters in 10 US states will decide the Republican presidential candidate. There will be some intense battles particularly as front runner Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum battle it out in Ohio, which is too close to call.

Twitter has produced this infographic mapping the road to Super Tuesday, from the debates to the candidate tweets to give a snap shot of the Republican battle to select a candidate to face Barack Obama in November’s US presidential election.

Also going to the polls today are Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Oklahoma, Idaho, North Dakota and Alaska.

The graph below charts the number of Tweets mentioning each of the Republican candidates throughout the campaign: