Polling data suggests that GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney is more popular in New Hampshire than the rest of the Republican field. But recent Google statistics indicate that Texas Rep. Ron Paul and even Kim Kardashian are piquing greater interest than Romney in the Granite State.
A recent RealClearPolitics polling average from Dec. 27, 2011, to Jan. 3, 2012, showed Romney crushing Paul, his closest competitor in New Hampshire, by a whopping 21.3-point margin. Romney governed the neighboring state of Massachusetts between 2003 and 2007.
But despite Romney’s polling advantage, Internet interest in Paul among New Hampshire residents — gauged using search statistics from Google Insights for Search — steadily increased from the beginning of January 2011 to the beginning of January 2012, maintaining a lead in user interest over Romney since early June 2011.
New Hampshire Internet users exhibited significantly more interest in Paul than Romney through December, with Paul-related search queries increasing exponentially throughout the month.
The Google data “analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time,” according to the company
The search engine also eliminates “repeated queries from a single user over a short period of time, so that the level of interest isn’t artificially impacted by these type of queries.”
The number of news stories referencing Romney far outnumbered those mentioning Paul, Santorum and even Kim Kardashian in New Hampshire, but both Paul and Kardashian are more popular Internet searches than Romney, according to Google Trends.
When asked by The Daily Caller if Romney thought this would have any effect on the New Hampshire primary, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul declined to comment. (RELATED: More coverage of Kim Kardashian)
YouTube statistics tell a similar story. One of the most shared videos in Boston and Manchester, New Hampshire is by Endorse Liberty PAC. The video, titled, “Ron Paul — Watch this presentation to see why so many people are endorsing Ron Paul for President,” already has over 96,000 views.
The Huffington Post reported Wednesday that Romney’s first post-Iowa event in New Hampshire opened with hostile questioning from attendees, offering “a rude awakening” to the former governor of Massachusetts.