Heading into Tuesday’s New Hampshire Primary, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman saw a post-debate “bump” in Internet searches after the Saturday night debate.
Huntsman, the third place winner of the New Hampshire primary, saw a 50 percent increase in Google searches between January 7 and January 9, according to numbers posted on Google’s “Politics & Elections” blog.
“In the first, we compared search traffic for each of the candidates on Saturday to searches for their names on Monday during the same time period,” said Google spokesperson Samantha Smith on the blog.
“Though there are fewer searches on weekends, we found a wide variation in the degree of search volume for each candidate,” said Smith.
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum was the only candidate to see a decrease — 35 percent — in Google searches.
Huntsman polled at 9 percent between Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, according to a Suffolk/7 News Tracking poll. He picked up an additional seven percentage points in a poll taken Jan. 8–9.
An avid motorcycle enthusiast, Huntsman called his third-place finish a “ticket to ride” out of New Hampshire and on to the South Carolina primary.