The Democratic Candidates on Google Trends

Flourish has mapped out the Top searched Democratic debate candidates on Google during 2019. The Flourish interactive map shows the most searched candidate in each U.S. state from a list of 20 candidates.

It is important to remember that this is a map showing the most searched Democratic debate candidate in each state. Being the most searched candidate doesn't equate to being the most supported. However the map is still interesting in showing where individual candidates are having the most impact.

The map shows that there are some clear geographical patterns in the number of searches for individual candidates. For example Beto O'Rourke is by far the most searched Democrat in his home state of Texas. Similarly Kamala Harris is the most searched candidate in many counties in her home state of California.

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders appear to be the most searched candidates in the most counties. Let's take a closer look at where more people are searching for Biden and where more people are searching for Sanders.



We can use Google Trends to compare just Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders over the same period (Jan - June 2019). We can then see which of these candidates is the most searched in each metro area. This map shows that Biden is being searched more in parts of the Midwest and the South. Bernie Sanders is searched more in the West and the North East.



Google Trends also allows us to chart the number of searches for each candidate over time. This chart reveals a huge spike for Bernie Sanders in February, when he announced his intention to run in 2020. Joe Biden announced his candidacy in late April and received a similar spike in searches on Google. After that spike his number of searches leveled out at around the same level as Bernie Sanders, although Biden has been searched more in the last few weeks than Sanders.

FiveThirtyEight are tracking how each of the candidates are performing in all the opinion polls. In their average poll of polls on June 19th Joe Biden was on 31.1% support and Bernie Sanders was on 15.7%.