Stats: CNN Florida Debate 1-26-2012 (Wolf Blitzer)

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Some heavy baiting coupled with a fairly hands-off style from CNN's Wolf Blitzer resulted in several tussles between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, the GOP frontrunners. Mitt talking the most of all the candidates with 24:09 (mm:ss) and Rick Santorum & Newt following closely with 22:08 and 21:31 respectively. Ron Paul once again lagging the rest of the field with 13:57 of speaking time, good enough for 17% of the overall pie.

It should be said that generally Wolf did a solid job of involving everyone in each topic even though he targeted Mitt & Newt more often in terms of questions posed, but the bulk of the extra time came from back 'n forth rebuttals. Whereas Santorum had fewer questions than the frontrunners and only four more turns than Ron Paul, he maximized his mic time by having longer answers and averaged 14 seconds longer per response than Dr Paul, 16 seconds longer than Mitt and 25 seconds longer than the Speaker.

It would be nice to have an effort that resulted in all of the candidates receiving an equal time, but overall when Wolf strayed from the campaign issues and focused on the policy issues he did a decent job of involving all of the nominees. CNN managed to squeeze an hour and twenty minutes of actual talking time, so that speaks well of how the debate was handled in terms of letting the Republicans use the stage time.

Here's the CNN Florida debate stats:

	Total Talk	%
Romney	24:09	29.53%
Santorum	22:08	27.07%
Gingrich	21:31	26.32%
Ron Paul	13:57	17.07%
Total	1:21:46	100.00%

*Note: This is uninterrupted talking time, except for audience cheer/applause in the middle of a response as this goes against their official response time.

	Turns Talking	%
Gingrich	31	32.29%
Romney	29	30.21%
Santorum	20	20.83%
Ron Paul	16	16.67%
Total	96	100.00%

	Avg b/w Talks	Longest Wait
Romney	1:53	5:09
Gingrich	2:05	5:58
Santorum	3:18	10:25
Ron Paul	3:58	9:55

	Qs	Responses	Follow-ups
Gingrich	18	10	3
Romney	17	12	0
Ron Paul	14	2	0
Santorum	14	5	1
Total	63	29	4

Note: Qs = Questions; Responses (candidates responding to each other); Followups (moderator following up from the previous question)