While the final count from Super Tuesday is far from over, it looks like GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump has surged ahead in the polls, declaring victory in most of the Southern bloc, nabbing Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia, as well as New England states Massachusetts and Vermont.
As of now, Trump has amassed a total of 315 delegates (233 gained last night) out of the 1,237 to win the primary thus far, leaving contenders Ted Cruz with 188 and Marco Rubio with 90. As you've probably figured out, a Trump victory seems imminent — which is why some Americans have taken to planning on leaving on a permanent vacation to Canada.
Google data editor Simon Rogers noted the uptick in a tweet sent out on Tuesday night: by midnight, the search had surged to 1,150 percent before tempering off and nestling in at about 500 percent.
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
As Mashable noted, the state with the most Google queries during the peak of the search term's popularity pointed to Massachusetts, where, at the time, Trump (or, as he is known by John Oliver fans as, Drumpf) had recently seized his win count at 49 percent. Following states were Washington, Texas, New York and California.
@smfrogers @jtuohey21 this shows 1500%? pic.twitter.com/T9ftRHSrsG — Brian Ries (@moneyries) March 2, 2016
So many American citizens were searching for more emigration information, in fact, that they more or less crashed the Canadian government's official site, which read at 12:06 a.m. EST : "You may experience delays while using the website. We are working to resolve this issue. Thank you for your patience."
The main draw of the site? It has a tool that measures how eligible you are to successfully move to/become a citizen of Canada. With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's strides toward immigration reform — like repealing Bill C-24, which makes it illegal to revoke citizenship from those convicted of terrorism or treason, as well as other major policy overhauls — you might want to consider it if you're not a fan of the man who might be the last GOP candidate standing.
Source: Google Trends
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