#SuperTuesday: Searches for 'How can I move to Canada?' spike
The number of Google searches for “how can I move to Canada” increased dramatically on Super Tuesday, as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump scored big wins in the race to the White House.
Simon Rogers, a data editor at Google, reported the observation on Twitter Tuesday night.
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
That 350 per cent spike was just the beginning, though. A journalist with Mashable saw an even greater increase just minutes later.
@smfrogers @jtuohey21 this shows 1500%? pic.twitter.com/T9ftRHSrsG
— Brian Ries (@moneyries) March 2, 2016
Another Twitter user noticed an error message appearing on the website of Citizenship and Immigration Canada suggesting greater than normal traffic.
@smfrogers and Canada Immigration CIC website suffers unde rthe load. pic.twitter.com/KrdxQItxiB
— Hans Van Daele (@hansvandaele) March 2, 2016
Democrat Hillary Clinton won seven states while Republican Donald Trump won at least seven in Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses.
Threatening to leave the United States (or any jurisdiction, for that matter) at the prospect of an unwanted election result has been something of a tradition since 2000, and only grew more common with the advent of social media.
The meme resurfaced ahead of this year's U.S. election with the launch of the tongue-in-cheek "Cape Breton If Trump Wins" campaign, prompting CNN to send a crew to the East Coast island to shoot a segment.
Never one to miss out on a social media trend, Toronto Coun. Norm Kelly scored more than 34,000 retweets with this post.
To all my American followers tweeting at me tonight, here’s the link: https://t.co/0epl8Z5zlQ pic.twitter.com/mMfeIc1Ayg
— Norm Kelly (@norm) March 2, 2016
