What Americans were searching on Google as election came to a close
After casting their votes, Americans headed home on Tuesday to anxiously await the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
And most likely, they pulled out their laptops and surfed the web while doing so.
Throughout the day, Google saw a variety of questions related to voting. But as day turned to night, the searches shifted, and voters focused on issues that mattered most to them as results trickled in.
Here are some subjects people were searching for just two hours before polls closed on the West Coast (11 p.m. ET):
1. Canada immigration
It’s no surprise people were searching for “Canada immigration” as the 2016 U.S. presidential election came to a close early Wednesday morning.
Throughout the campaign, frightened American voters stated, “If they get elected, I’m moving to Canada!”
The Canadian government website for immigration crashed Tuesday night while media reported several battleground states were still too close to call. The website cic.gc.ca went to a 500 Internal Server Error throughout the night Tuesday and into the early hours on Wednesday.
There was no answer at the Canadian Immigration Services headquarters late Tuesday, so it’s not known if the website’s outage was related to nervous from American voters.
But perhaps some of those voters were looking to follow through on their promise.
2. Dow futures
Overseas stocks tumbled Wednesday as Donald Trump gained the lead in the electoral vote count in the presidential election.
“Right now, the markets are heading for the hills, but we’ll see,” Robert Tipp, chief investments strategist for global bonds and foreign exchange at Prudential Fixed Income told CNBC. “That’s a function of fear as much as fact.”
As of 12:20 a.m. ET, Dow futures, which bet on the direction of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, had dropped 840 points.
3. Michigan electoral votes
Michigan was declared a “tossup” by the CBS News Decision Desk early Tuesday evening.
It came as a shock to Democrats -- as the state has historically gone their way.
In fact, a Republican nominee hadn’t won the state of Michigan since 1988, CBS News reported.
People on Google clearly wanted to know: What happened?
4. Dow Jones
People were also frantically searching for “Dow Jones” on Tuesday, which is most likely linked with the search for “Dow futures,” which plunged about 5 percent early Wednesday morning.
5. Wisconsin electoral votes
What’s happening in Wisconsin?
The battleground state was declared a “tossup” Tuesday evening. By early Wednesday morning, the CBS News Decision Desk reported that Trump “[had] an edge” over Clinton.
Around 12:30 a.m. ET, the desk said the race was too close to call, and that it was still waiting on a vote count from the Milwaukee area.
While commenting on the current projections in Michigan, a Clinton aide told CBS News her camp did not believe Clinton would pull out a victory “in the end.”
That may come as a surprise to some, because Barack Obama -- a Clinton supporter -- won the state by 14 points in 2008 and 7 points in 2012.
But others have pointed out that this year’s Democratic nominee hadn’t visited the state since April.
