Top Google Queries on 2016 Presidential Candidates

Here were Google's top queries about each contender over the summer

Potential voters who take their curiosity about presidential candidates to Google are interested in Hillary Rodham Clinton's age, Jeb Bush's height, Chris Christie's weight, Donald Trump's net worth, Carly Fiorina's marital status and Bobby Jindal's birthplace.

Those were among the top questions that the Internet search engine was asked about each candidate over the past couple of months. The data, which is being released by Google this year for the first time during a presidential campaign, gives insight into what voters are thinking about that is different from what traditional pollsters provide.

The first lesson may be not to forget the basics: shortly after Google first released questions posed about each candidate, Republican Marco Rubio's campaign released a video in which he answered some of them.

Google gets some three billion search requests each day and is beginning to see the value of compiling that information. For instance, conventional pollsters badly missed the breadth of David Cameron and his Conservative Party's victory in the British elections this spring. Google didn't necessarily predict it either, but picked up an intriguing increase in the amount of questions people were asking about the Conservatives in the days before voting, said Simon Rogers, data editor for Google's News Lab.

Height is clearly a preoccupation of Google searchers. Besides Bush, that was the top question about Christie, John Kasich, George Pataki and Rand Paul. Age is also a popular query. Two of the top four questions about New Jersey's Christie concerned how much he weighed and how much weight he had lost.

Before he shot up in the polls late in the summer, voters simply wanted to know: "Who is Ben Carson?"

After questions about her age and height, searchers asked about Clinton: "What did Hillary do wrong?" Other questions concerned whether she was still running or if she was in trouble. Some specific questions were asked frequently, such as why Fiorina was fired as Hewlett Packard's chief executive, Mike Huckabee's views on the Iran deal and Rubio's position on gay marriage.

Google does not publicly release specific numbers on the searches conducted on each candidate.

These were the top queries about each contender this summer:

How tall is Jeb Bush?

Who is Ben Carson?

Who is Lincoln Chafee?

How tall is Chris Christie?

How old is Hillary Clinton?

How can Ted Cruz run?

How old is Carly Fiorina?

Who is Jim Gilmore?

Who is Lindsey Graham?

How old is Mike Huckabee?

Where was Bobby Jindal born?

How tall is John Kasich?

Is Martin O'Malley a Democrat or Republican?

How tall is George Pataki?

How tall is Rand Paul?

How old is Rick Perry?

How old is Marco Rubio?

How old is Bernie Sanders?

Where is Rick Santorum from?

How old is Donald Trump?

How old is Scott Walker?

Who is Jim Webb?

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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