This year seems to have been a political nightmare for the US, according to a new chart based on search trends of 2019.
The year started with the record-breaking government shutdown and ended with ‘Impeachment’ as the most popular searched term.
Although most of the trends on the list are grave, ‘Blackface’, ‘Mass shooting’ and ‘Recession’, there are a few that brought us back to happier times, such as ‘Baby Yoda’, ‘SpaceX’ and ‘Game of Thrones‘.
The chart shows ‘Jeffrey Epstein’ and ‘Impeachment’ were similar in their single large spike.
For impeachment, which was the most popular search at the end of the year, the s highest peak of Google interest occurred the week of September 22, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched the impeachment inquiry.
And also the week of December 15th, when President Donald Trump became the third president in US history to be impeached.
However, Game of Thrones rules supreme with the largest uptick of them all in 2019.
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The chart was created using data from Google News Lab, which according to AXIOS, ‘highlights how public’s attention span was as the media darted from on big thing to another’.
The year kicked off with the government shutdown that began in December 2018 and ran into January of this year – the event lasted for 35 days, making it the longest in history.
The partial shutdown was due to the Democrats rejecting President Donald Trump’s $5 billion bill to fund his US – Mexico border wall.
As a result, funding for government agencies expired, leaving roughly 800,000 federal workers without paychecks.
Trump signed the bill on January 25th to end the shutdown.
This year seems to have been a political nightmare for the US, according to a new chart based on search trends of 2019. The year started with the record-breaking government shutdown and ended with ‘Impeachment’ as the most popular searched term
The chart shows ‘Jeffrey Epstein’ (left) and ‘Impeachment’ were similar in their single large spike. ‘Greta Thunberg’ (right) received surges of interest in late September and mid-December, giving her more search interest in the last three months
While ‘Government shutdown’ was a trending search, ‘Mexico-US border’ started to spark people’s interest and had an uptick in searches.
Next came the Green New Deal, proposed in February by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which was a congressional resolution for tackling climate change.
This trend took off in February and was popular into March, as was the shocking term ‘Blackface’.
The trend was sparked when Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia came under fire in early February for being one of two men in a photo where one was in blackface and the other wore a Ku Klux Klan outfit.
Also a popular search in March was the ‘North Keara-Hanoi Summit’, which made history as North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump met for the first time.
‘Brexit’ is next on the list and appears to have a steady flow of searches starting from the beginning of the year until the end, as did ‘Israel’.
‘SpaceX’ also began trending at the beginning of the year, but had its biggest spike between April and May when the firm was set to launch its Falcon Heavy rocket for its second-ever flight.
However, Game of Thrones rules supreme with the largest uptick of them all in 2019. What may not come a surprise is ‘the show had a spike between April May, while the show was airing on HBO
What may not come a surprise is ‘Game of Thrones’ being a popular search around the same time – it began its last season on April 14th and ended it on May 19th.
‘Venezuela’ was under a national disaster in the first part of the year, gaining much attention online, but trickled off once the protesting in the streets came to a halt.
‘IPO’ had a bump around May, which is the same time both Lyft and Uber went public on the New York Stock Exchange.
‘China-US trade war’, ‘Huawei’ and ‘Iran’ were three topics that kept a steady search trend throughout the year, all with increases around the summer.
Then came ‘Robert Mueller’ from March to July and ‘Mass shootings’ was also a popular searched term between August and September – 53 Americans died in 38 mass shootings in August alone.
‘Recession’ was on most people’s minds around the same time as ‘Hurricane Dorian’ ripped through the Central Atlantic on September 6th.
After this natural disaster, the US experienced human made disasters.
‘Ukrain+Donald Trump’ searches appeared at the end of September and ‘Mark Zuckerberg’, although a popular search throughout the year, witnessed a spike in November when the Facebook CEO was on trial for data protection issues.
After all of the turmoil and hardships, the world was blessed with ‘Baby Yoda’ on November 12th – it even beat out ‘Royal Baby’ on Goggle’s 2019 Babies search lineup. The chart shows its highest spike was in December and it appears to be continuing into the New Year
Before Zuckerberg was the talk of the town, ‘Greta Thunberg’ was the most searched.
The 16-year-old Swedish environmentalist traveled to the US in August and everyone was searching her name to find out who she was.
Then there was ‘California Fires’ that was trending between October and November as flames engulfed parts of The Golden State.
And it appears many people were looking forward to the next election, as ‘2020 pres. Election’ was steadily trending throughout the entire year.
After all of the turmoil and hardships, the world was blessed with ‘Baby Yoda’ on November 12th – it even beat out ‘Royal Baby’ on Goggle’s 2019 Babies search lineup.
The chart shows its highest spike was in December and it appears to be continuing into the New Year.
