Here's the 2016 GOP candidate most over-hyped by the media


FiveThirtyEight's Datalab blog put together a handy chart comparing Google News hits (that's the orange) with Google search frequency (that's the black line) for the 2016 Republican contenders. In general, each follows a similar pattern: There's an initial bump in both measures when the candidate announces, and then interest peters off because there are roughly a billion of these people and nobody wants to think about the election yet.
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There are, however, a few significant anomalies: Sen. Rand Paul, for example, received a spurt of attention for his anti-Patriot Act/NSA filibuster that was larger than several candidates' announcement peaks. But it's Jeb Bush who overwhelmingly takes the prize for most over-hyped candidate, with his media coverage far outpacing the interest of voters.
Tabloid king Donald Trump, of course, charts the biggest spike of any candidate. It's huge.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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