Bernie Sanders Won The Democratic Debate Hands Down, According To The Internet


Bernie Sanders has yet another reason to celebrate.

According to online stats provided by search engine giant Google, the Vermont senator emerged as the undisputed winner of the fourth Democratic debate held in Charleston, South Carolina, on Sunday night. While online stats should definitely be taken with a pinch of salt, the sheer daylight that Sanders has been able to create between himself and national front-runner Hillary Clinton will no doubt come as a major concern to the latter, whose campaign has self-admittedly been made “nervous” after Sanders’ surging lead in the primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire over the course of the last few weeks.

Google Trends, a tool designed by the search engine company to track search interests over any period of time, showed that Bernie Sanders was the most-searched Democratic candidate during the debate, according to CBS News. What’s more remarkable is that Sanders was not only the most-searched candidate in the primary states but in every single U.S. state. In the graph provided by Google below, the blue line represents Bernie Sanders, the red represents former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the yellow line shows former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s performance.

Bernie Sanders thumped Hillary Clinton by 100 to 28, meaning for every 100 people who searched the keyword “Bernie Sanders” on Google, only 28 searched “Hillary Clinton.”

Bernie Sanders was the most-searched Democratic candidate on the day of the debate.
The graph below shows search interests in the United States on 17th January. The blue line represents Bernie Sanders, red represents Hillary Clinton while yellow represents former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. [Image via Google Trends]

Moreover, according to Google, which also tracks specific questions relating to keywords (in this case the name of the Democratic candidates), these are the questions people most asked the search engine during the day of the debate.

For Bernie Sanders, Google was awash with these two questions.

“Why is Bernie Sanders so popular?”

“Can Bernie Sanders win?”

For Hillary Clinton, these were the questions people were most interested in knowing the answers to.

“Will Hillary Clinton get the nomination?”

“Will Hillary Clinton get prosecuted?”

For Martin O’Malley, this was the questions people asked Google.

“Why is Martin O’Malley running for president?”

Democratic debate candidates
If Google’s fact sheets are anything to go by, Bernie sanders was the undisputed winner of the fourth and the final Democratic debate before the nomination process begins. [Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images]

As far as Twitter is concerned, Bernie Sanders again seemed to have a field day. Major publications such as the Huffington Post, Slate, Politico, and NBC News carried out polls on their respective Twitter pages, asking readers who won the Democratic debate. All of them had one answer: Senator Bernie Sanders.

According to Twitter stats, a larger number of people began following Bernie Sanders during the course of the debate than they did either Hillary Clinton or Martin O’Malley. In fact, O’Malley beat Clinton in gaining more followers on Twitter during the Democratic debate.

As for the most memorable #Demdebate moment, Bernie Sanders won here too.

It remains to be seen if the internet’s decision on who won the Democratic debate will be of any consequence at the end of the nomination process, but this small victory for Bernie Sanders could pave the way for the rest of his campaign.

[Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images]

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