  In this paper, we present quantitative and qualitative analysis of the top
retweeted tweets (viral tweets) pertaining to the US presidential elections
from September 1, 2016 to Election Day on November 8, 2016. For everyday, we
tagged the top 50 most retweeted tweets as supporting or attacking either
candidate or as neutral/irrelevant. Then we analyzed the tweets in each class
for: general trends and statistics; the most frequently used hashtags, terms,
and locations; the most retweeted accounts and tweets; and the most shared news
and links. In all we analyzed the 3,450 most viral tweets that grabbed the most
attention during the US election and were retweeted in total 26.3 million times
accounting over 40% of the total tweet volume pertaining to the US election in
the aforementioned period. Our analysis of the tweets highlights some of the
differences between the social media strategies of both candidates, the
penetration of their messages, and the potential effect of attacks on both
