Most of Google's Top 5 Most-Searched Politicians of 2018 Lost Their Races
Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams was the most-searched politician in the United States in 2018, according to a top-10 list Google released Wednesday.
Abrams lost to Republican Brian Kemp in November after a tight race which hinged on Kemp’s role overseeing state elections as Georgia secretary of state during the campaign.
Abrams accused Kemp of suppressing minority voters because of the “exact match” voter ID law that flags voter registrations with even slight discrepancies from other official identification documents, according to The Washington Post.
Abrams has said she is interested in running for Senate in Georgia or reprising her race against Kemp in 2022.
The other politicians who rounded out the search engine’s list of the five most-searched politicians of the year include Sen. Ted Cruz’s challenger in Texas, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Cruz himself, unsuccessful Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and New York progressive Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, according to Google’s list.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Democratic Arizona Sen.-elect Kyrsten Sinema, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins rounded out the top 10, according to Google.
Google also noted that the most popular how-to questions of the year in the U.S. were “how to vote” followed by “how to register to vote.”
“Election results” was the fourth most popular news search term.
But Americans used Google for much more than becoming more politically informed.
“Unicorn cake,” “Fortnite,” and “how to apply magnetic lashes” were the top search terms of 2018, reported NBC News.
The most popular question asked on Google in the U.S. was “what is Bitcoin?”
Also at the top of search trends were celebrities who passed away in 2018, including musicians Avicii and Mac Miller, chef and television host Anthony Bourdain and scientist Stephen Hawking.
Google released the list one day after Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified before the House Judiciary Committee about topics including political bias among the company’s employees.
Pichai emphasized the apolitical nature of the algorithms that determine search results for Google customers and downplayed Republicans’ fears that Google employees banded together to alter results for political purposes.
“At any given moment we assume that somebody may be acting in bad faith, and that’s how we have designed our systems with all the protections in place,” Pichai told Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz during the hearing.
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