Google searches for K-shaped recovery, white supremacy and ‘how to move to New Zealand’ has risen during debate
The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden may have raised more questions than it answered.
As political opponents fought for the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, economic recovery and civil unrest across the country – often talking to each other and rushing to moderator Chris Wallace in the process – viewers turned to search engines like Google GOOG,
and dictionary sites like Merriam-Webster to help decipher what the candidates were saying.
In the first hour of the roughly 90-minute debate, Google’s most popular searches were:
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1. K-shaped recovery
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2. Roe vs. Wade
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3. How many people have pre-existing conditions?
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4. Who wins the debate?
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5. Affordable Care Act
These correlated with candidates arguing over whether we would see a V-shaped (Trump) or K-shaped (Biden) economic recovery, as well as Trump’s nomination of conservative Amy Coney Barrett for the vacant Supreme Court seat of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and fears she could overthrow Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that legalized abortion.
Notice: On this K-shaped recovery: for half of America, the economy is still terrible
Trump and Biden have also quarreled over health care, with Biden accusing Trump of cutting coverage for “100 million people with pre-existing conditions” as part of the president’s attempts to scrap the Obama-era affordable care law . Trump replied, “There aren’t 100 million people with pre-existing conditions.” The actual number depends on who you ask: The Kaiser Family Foundation has estimated that at least 53.8 million adults had pre-existing conditions in 2018, but a 2017 A study by the Department of Health and Human Services estimated that 133 million people had pre-existing conditions this would make them unable to purchase insurance.
Read more:Here’s where Trump and Biden stand on health care
Interest in ‘white supremacy’ research also increased during the debate, after Wallace called on Trump to condemn white supremacists and militias, and tell them to step back and not add to the debate. violence in towns that have been rocked by protests against racial injustice and police brutality. The president’s response left many critics worried. He told the Proud Boys, a far-right group that the Southern Poverty Law Center had been classified as a hate group, and that it had been suspended by Twitter TWTR,
and Facebook FB,
to “take a step back and be ready”. He then added, “But I’ll tell you what, someone has to do something against the antifa and the left.”
This exchange drove the most trending research, “Trump’s response to white supremacy,” to a peak of more than 5,000%, Google reported.
This topic struck a chord with many viewers, as “Proud Boys” was the main Twitter trend on Wednesday morning, and “Trump” and “white supremacy” also dominated Google trends earlier in the day. The New York Times reported that the Proud Boys themselves called Trump’s comments “historic”; and that in a dedicated Proud Boys channel on the private messaging app Telegram, the members viewed the president’s words as “tacit endorsement of their tactics violent ”.
Merriam-Webster also followed dictionary searches during and after the debate, finding that top search words included “white supremacist,” “antifa,” “petulant,” “racism,” “poll observer,” “moderator. And “eve,” “which could all be attributed to Trump and Biden’s heated exchanges on Tuesday night.
Dictionary.com also picked up on CNN’s Dana Bash calling the debate a “sh-show,” saying the rude phrase is a word, and saying searches suddenly spiked Tuesday night.
In addition, Google searches in the United States for how to move to New Zealand have also exploded during the debate. according to Google Trends and reported by Newshub, a New Zealand media company. Residents of the state of Oregon (home to Portland, which has been a hotbed of injustice protests) Google searched the most for “how to move to New Zealand,” while residents of Washington, D.C. Nevada and Utah were also particularly interested, according to the data. .
Related:Here’s how to get foreign citizenship and a second passport in as little as two years
Read MarketWatch’s analysis of the debate here and follow our Election 2020 coverage here.
