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  • 2016-03-09 (xsd:date)
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  • 'Moving to Canada' Search Spike? (en)
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  • On 1 March 2016, a number of American states held Super Tuesday primaries. The next day, Google Trends tweeted that searches originating from the United States about emigrating from the to Canada reached an all-time high: Google offered no explanation for the spike, but on 2 March 2016, the Washington Post published a piece that maintained that the real winner of Super Tuesday was Canada: The Washington Post included a tweet of a screenshot of the Canadian immigration web site published late on 1 March 2015: However, it wasn't immediately clear whether Super Tuesday (or any other specific event) spurred the search spike. U.S. News & World Report dug into the data, and discovered that the searches were indeed highest in two states where Trump won primaries on Super Tuesday (Massachusetts and Virginia). But that outlet uncovered some other related search data that suggested the cause and effect wasn't necessarily cut and dried. For example, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders received equal attention in related searches, but no one seemed to be blaming the spike on him: Vox pointed out that while the spike following the re-election of George W. Bush appeared smaller, that was also a period before smartphones and widespread use of social media. TIME reported that immigration did increase following that election, but no one is sure specifically what caused that uptick. (Confounding factors like a weak economy or increased internet relationships could have also been factors.) Shortly after the story made its rounds, psychology professor Adam Alter speculated that few truly would leave the United States: A key aspect of the rumor hinged on the number of Americans searching for ways to get out of the country on Canada's official immigration site, but when we visited that link on 9 March 2016, a nearly identical error message appeared: The exact impetus for the rise in searches for the phrase move to Canada remains unclear. While Americans on both sides of the aisle threaten to leave the country for political reasons during every election, studies suggest that only a handful follow through with such plans. Also, reported error messages on the Canadian immigration website on 1 March 2016 were still in place on 9 March 2016, more than a week after the spike in searches abated. (en)
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