Much as he is in the real-world polls, Gov. Tim Pawlenty is lagging behind his presumptive Republican rivals in the race for the 2012 presidential nomination in the new frontier of social media campaigning.

As first reported by the online magazine Slate, Pawlenty is running far, far behind GOPers Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich on Twitter. Pawlenty has 16,464 followers of his Twitter account and has tweeted just 235 times. By comparison, Palin has nearly 192,000 followers, using Twitter and Facebook as her preferred campaign media. Gingrich (who said just last week that, yes, he's thinking of running) is the champ, with more than 1.3 million followers.

Here's the complete list:

Newt Gingrich: 1,308,757 followers, 1,925 tweets
Sarah Palin: 191,164 followers, 347 tweets
Mike Huckabee: 83,297 followers, 1,188 tweets
Tim Pawlenty: 16,464 followers, 235 tweets
Mitt Romney: 14,347 followers, 241 tweets
Haley Barbour: 6,357 followers, 264 tweets
Mitch Daniels: 3,451 followers, 457 tweets