Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) may not have won the CNN debate Tuesday night, according to the vast majority of pundits. But his performance apparently instigated an intense amount of online interest in his candidacy.
Google Trends did several analyses of searches for the various candidates during the debate.
And Sanders, the chief rival to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, dominated in every single state.
Here's a side-by-side map of the US before and after the debate:
As the maps show, Sanders was already fairly dominant in online-search interest. This could be because Clinton has been a national figure for two decades and the public is already familiar with her.
But there were three other Democratic candidates on the stage.
Google Trends also provided an eight-minute-block ranking of the five Democratic candidates throughout the debate and found that Sanders only briefly dropped out of his No. 1 position twice. Both times he quickly returned to his status as the most-searched candidate.
