With the Iowa caucuses only a few days away, Ron Paul has maintained his slim lead among likely voters, with all polling firms but one finding Paul leading by single digits for the past two weeks.

Online, however, the Texas libertarian has little competition. Paul’s search term totals haven’t just vastly outperformed those for his fellow candidates in Iowa, New Hampshire and nationwide over the past months; [ron paul] is among the most popular News Search queries as well, exceeding even [christmas] over the month of December.

Back in Iowa, which hosts the nation’s first caucuses, only two News Search terms, [iowa] and [news], are more popular than [ron paul]. And nationwide, the only other 2012 presidential candidate making the list of top News Search terms is [obama], which boasts only half as many queries as [ron paul], which has more than doubled in nationwide volume over the past 30 days.


This trend is mirrored in New Hampshire and across the United States. Voters participate in the nation’s first primary on January 10 in New Hampshire, where News Search queries for [ron paul] exceed searches for all other terms besides [nh], [news], and [new hampshire]. Looking at News Searches across the U.S., only [news] beats [ron paul].