I did a quick search on Google Trends with regard to our five presidential candidates and the result I got is interesting, but not at all surprising. If the Philippine Elections were a contest on who generates the most online buzz, i.e. “trending”, there seems to be one clear winner — Rodrigo Duterte. It’s not even close.

Of course online buzz is neutral, and the graph doesn’t distinguish between positive and negative buzz. It also doesn’t mean he will win the elections. Maybe.

There were some points earlier this year when Jejomar Binay was on top (February 15th) or Grace Poe was on top (March 8th), but other than those two dates, Rodrigo Duterte is the clear trending king, with the gap between him and the others getting wider and wider.

One thing that surprised me though was when I was searching for “Grace Poe”, Google showed “Educator”, while for all the others, Google showed Politician or any of its variants (Mayor, Vice President).

Now, if only Google can predict the winner based on online buzz…