Donald Trump is leading his Republican presidential rivals in Google searches in South Carolina Saturday on the day of the nation's first Southern primary.
But it is U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio who appears to be surging, passing Sen. Ted Cruz and closing in on Trump.
Here is the breakdown of Google Trends' searches in the Palmetto State from earlier Saturday:
- Trump: 30 percent.
- Marco Rubio: 23 percent.
- Ted Cruz: 21 percent.
- John Kasich: 10 percent.
- Jeb Bush: 9 percent.
- Ben Carson: 7 percent.
Google searches played a key role in predicting the outcome of the New Hampshire primary last week.
Searches of presidential candidates conducted by Google users in the Granite State on Feb. 9 corresponded closely with the voting results of the state’s primary.
Trump was the top-searched candidate that day. He won with 35 percent of the vote.
On Google, he received 41 percent of the searches an hour before the polls closed, according to the search giant. No. 2 was Kasich, who got 16 percent of both the vote and the searches.
In addition, Cruz took third, with 12 percent of the vote and 15 percent of the searches.
The battle between Bush and Rubio was close online and in real life. While Bush took fourth place at the polls, winning 11 percent, he got just 7 percent of the online searches.
Meanwhile, Rubio got 10 percent of the searches and only 10.6 percent of the vote.
For Democrats, Bernie Sanders was the top-searched candidate. He won 60 percent of the vote in New Hampshire.
He got 72 percent of the Google searches, while Hillary Clinton got 28 percent of the queries and 38 percent of the vote.
In South Carolina, the polls opened at 7 a.m. ET and will close at 7 p.m.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
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