Here’s the list of Twitter’s top “Trending Topics” for the U.S., via a screenshot I took after 6 pm New York time. Unless I’m missing something (Lily Allen didn’t join the Tea Party, right?) there’s nary a political term there:

The folks over at Trendrr, who make a living sifting through social media for interesting data, definitely do show a big surge in political Tweets**. These three charts show the spike in usage for Republican candidates’ names, Democratic candidates and election-related terms in general (click to enlarge):

Roll all that up together, and you’re at perhaps 23,000 mentions per hour. Which is a lot–but it’s no iPhone 4: On the day that Apple rolled out its latest phone last spring, it was generating a peak of 55,000 mentions per hour, says Trendrr.

Still, this data comes from the mid-afternoon on the day before elections, and we can assume it will increase throughout the next 24 hours. The Washington Post certainly thinks it’s worth paying attention to Twitter during the election: The paper is buying the word “election” as a Promoted Trend tomorrow. We’ll check back in with Trendrr on Tuesday for an update….

*Hope I got that right. **That’s right, right?

[Image credit: Library of Congress via Flickr]

This is, after all, the third consecutive time that HP has gone outside to pick a leader, previously hiring Carly Fiorina from Lucent and Mark Hurd from NCR (NCR). And before deciding on Apotheker, the company was known to be considering three CEO-caliber candidates from its own roster–Todd Bradley, executive VP of HP’s personal systems group; Ann Livermore, vice president of HP’s $54 billion Enterprise Business; and Dave Donatelli, executive VP of Enterprise Servers and the guy who helped lead HP’s successful bidding war for 3Par. Donatelli is a relatively new hire and may not have had strong CEO aspirations (yet), but Livermore has been passed over the the top job three times now, and sources at HP say Bradley had been “hopeful” about becoming the company’s next CEO.

Has Apotheker’s appointment made these three execs flight risks?

J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz doesn’t think so. “Livermore has been an HP-lifer and credited with integrating the enterprise services and hardware practices,” he wrote in a note to clients today. “We think [she] will want to stick around as the enterprise solutions mantra continues. Meanwhile, Bradley has been instrumental in augmenting the personal systems business, and we think he will be focused on next leveraging the Palm acquisition into a potential disruptive force in mobile communications environments. Lastly, Dave Donatelli is still relatively new to HP, and we expect him to be busy integrating the 3Par and 3Com assets, both deals of which he was the chief architect, based on our conversations with industry contacts.”

Makes sense, right? Livermore is a veteran and her hopes for the CEO spot couldn’t have been too high after being passed over for it twice. Donatelli has been at the company only a little over a year, reports to Livermore and is still making his mark at the company. And Bradley, though surely disappointed, has HP’s developing webOS-based device business in which to take solace. That said, if there is a flight risk among these three, he seems the most likely. Jokingly introduced as the CEO of HP at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference earlier this week, Bradley quipped, “Not yet.” And it seems clear he had his eye on the job. But will losing it to Apotheker inspire him to hop trains? Tough to say. In any event, were he to threaten to leave, HP (HPQ) would surely do all that it could to keep him (maybe it already is). Losing him at this point would be terrible for the company’s consumer business.

It’s been almost four months since Joanne Bradford stepped down as head of U.S. revenue and market development for Yahoo and the company has yet to hire a new exec to fill the key job.

That’s got a lot of people inside Yahoo (YHOO) a little jumpy, according to numerous sources who have contacted me recently, because of the importance of firm leadership in the premium display online ad business in which the Internet giant needs to keep excelling.

U.S. head Hilary Schneider has been leading the search for a replacement for Bradford, using star headhunter Jim Citrin of Spencer Stuart.

But she’s reportedly been unable to land the kind of prominent name Yahoo has been seeking for the job, after trying to attract several well-known candidates and rejecting others.

Microsoft (MSFT) recently hired an exec Yahoo had considered–former MTV Networks ad exec Carolyn Everson, who is likely to be announcing a new sales structure there soon–for its head of U.S. online ad sales.

With Everson and others not panning out, one hope was that Patrick Keane, CEO of Associated Content, which Yahoo just acquired, would take the job. But sources said he has thus far declined the offer.

And that’s why, sources said, Yahoo is back to eyeballing internal candidates again, especially 11-year Yahoo veteran Mitch Spolan, VP of North American field sales, and Mollie Spilman, Yahoo’s SVP of B2B marketing and also its packaging group.

Another Yahoo exec who had been in the running: Seth Dallaire, a former Microsoft exec whom Bradford brought to the company last fall as VP of mid-market sales, a newly-created role responsible for all mid-market sales efforts across search and display advertising.

We’ll see how it turns out, but as Yahoo just closed its second quarter, it will be important to get some clarity around its most important business in its most important market, especially as its stock continues its lackluster performance.

To help goose its shares, Yahoo announced a $3 billion stock buyback plan last week.

Which isn’t all that surprising when you think about it. The questions were posted online prior to the debate; the candidates almost certainly reviewed them in advance and prepared answers. “The YouTubified night was designed to bring spontaneity and freshness to a debate process that–more than a year before the election — has already grown a little stale,” Alessandra Stanley wrote in the New York Times. “It was certainly fresh and more fun to watch, but the taped questions and canned candidate messages worked against the spontaneity that is supposed to be the point of a live debate. Candidates expose their strengths and weaknesses best when challenging one another. Last night, it was the viewers who got exposure. YouTube and CNN provided more catharsis than clarity.”