Clinton Dominates Searches, While Trump Takes Social During Debates

by , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, September 27, 2016

Clinton Dominates Searches, While Trump Takes Social During Debates

The U.S. presidential debates Monday night created the perfect second-screen scenario for fact-checking as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton continually urged viewers to fact-check through phrases like “I hope the fact-checkers are turning up the volume and really working hard.”

While searches don’t always uncover actually “facts,” queries can lead those searching for clues to answers. Clinton led in Google searches with 53% during Monday’s first presidential debate, while Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump accounted for 62% of the conversation on Twitter.

The top-searched political issues in the past day were ISIS, Abortion, Immigration, Gun Control, and Police, according to Google.

The top trending questions on Trump in the past day were “Did Trump support the Iraq war?” “Who won the Clinton-Trump debate?” “How much money did Donald Trump’s father loan him?” “How is Trump doing?” and “Did ICE endorse Trump?”

The top trending questions on Clinton in the past day were “Who won, Clinton or Trump?” “What did Hillary Clinton’s data do?” “What emails did Hillary Clinton delete?” “Is Hillary Clinton still Secretary of State?” and “How is Hillary doing?”

While the nominees fired back at each other on several issues, from trade and taxes to the battle against ISIS, the U.S. economy was the most tweeted topic. Foreign affairs, energy and environment, terrorism and guns followed, per the Twitter Government hashtag @gov.

Prior to Monday night’s debate, Trump gained more search interest than Hillary Clinton in nearly every state, with the exceptions of Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico and Vermont, according to Google Trends.

 

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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