Google Trends, Part 2: Where are “The Next Three” candidates (Abrams, O’Rourke and Sanders) driving the most interest geographically?
In the last 2 months, Bernie Sanders has driven broader search interest everywhere, while Stacey Abrams and Beto O’Rourke have had more intense interest only in their home states, Georgie and Texas, respectively.
But that’s not the whole story.
If you look over the last 7 days, the strongest period for Beto in 2019 thus far, search interest in Beto is swamping the other two in every state except Sanders in Vermont.
Looking at specific early states, like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina we start to see other unannounced candidates like Biden (IA, NH) also beginning to drive some interest alongside Abrams, Beto and Sanders.
But in South Carolina, Abrams really stands apart from the field around the State of the Union, while Biden, Beto and Sanders in aggregate have similar interest.
In Nevada, Beto’s spike of interest from the El Paso event is relatively larger than elsewhere, while Abrams SOTU speech is still the largest overall spike.
