Won the GOP Debate

Forget the Polls. Google Tells Us Who Really Won the GOP Debate.

A spin through the world's biggest search engine shows what people think about the Republican candidates.

By AJ Vicens

A few dominant narratives emerged from Wednesday night's Republican presidential debate in Boulder, Colorado. One: The GOP and its supporters hate the media. Two: Donald Trump polls well with the GOP base, regardless of his debate performance. And three: Jeb Bush's campaign might be toast.

But there's also something to be learned from Google, the company that seems to know what we're thinking before we even think it. The folks at Google Trends compiled a mound of data during the debate, looking at real-time searches of the candidates, what people are trying to learn about each of them, and the sheer dominance of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina during the night's undercard debate that preceded the main event.

One Google interactive looked at which candidate people searched for after searching for another candidate. In other words, after people looked up Trump, whom did they search for next? The answer: Ben Carson. Click on a candidate below to see the related candidates.

Clearly, Trump was winning that race. But it shifted after the debate, with Carson and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida gaining some ground.














That seems to coincide with one of the story lines from the debate: Rubio handled questions about his voting absences and finances fairly well, and he may have supplanted Bush as the go-to establishment candidate in the race.