Donald’s Trump Super Tuesday win sees spike in Google searches for ‘How to move to Canada’
According to Google Trends, searches for “How to move to Canada” increased dramatically following the results of the Super Tuesday US presidential primary elections. Several Americans who were disheartened by the results contemplated leaving the country specifically to Canada as their future options.
The biggest searchers of those wanting advice on how to get to Canada was revealed with the top five states: Massachusetts, Washington, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia. It’s interesting to note that four of those five states were where Trump won a majority vote.
It’s unclear whether the results were triggered by Donald Trump taking seven states or Hillary Clinton also winning seven. Of course, it’s also a possibility a percentage of those searching are charmed by Canada’s new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
Google data editor, Simon Rogers first pointed out the trend, by noticing a spike of 350% in searches over a four-hour period for “How can I move to Canada” coming from the United States. But that was only the beginning.
Searches for "how can I move to Canada" on Google have spiked +350% in the past four hours #SuperTuesday
— Simon Rogers (@smfrogers) March 2, 2016
By midnight, the query rose 1,150%, before settling back down somewhere around the 500% mark on the day. (Rogers said on Twitter the numbers were “dynamic changing data.” According to Mashable, by Wednesday morning, Google said searches for “Move to Canada” were “higher than at any time in Google history”).
Google search results also show a breakdown by state and it seems that the majority of searches about emigrating to Canada came from Massachusetts, where Trump won in a landslide with 49% of the vote.
Canada’s website has a tool for people to determine their eligibility. After the Tuesday results, many Americans were searching for instructions on leaving this great nation that the Canadian government’s website seemed to be having problems.
A polite Canadian warning at the top of the website says: “You may experience delays while using the website. We are working to resolve this issue. Thank you for your patience.”
It is however not known if the delay is related to the sudden interest in emigration.
