In the wake of the closest Iowa caucuses in history, the race for the GOP presidential nomination turns to New Hampshire, which hosts this cycle’s first primary next Tuesday. How will the Iowa results will affect New Hampshire, if at all? To find out, we used Google’s Insights for Search to compare search queries for the top-polling candidates in New Hampshire. Ron Paul is atop the field and rising. Despite unparalleled search performance, Paul remains a distant second in the latest polls of likely voters in New Hampshire’s primary.


Though he only won the Iowa Caucuses by eight votes, Mitt Romney’s lead in New Hampshire polls looms large over the rest of the field. In Google searches by New Hampshirites, however, Romney is well behind Ron Paul, who also led searches in Iowa. Romney is also on the verge of being overtaken by Jon Huntsman in New Hampshire’s searches. Huntsman is third in searches and in some recent polls there.

Despite essentially tying Romney in Iowa, Rick Santorum still trails the pack in polls for New Hampshire (a state that contrasts sharply with Iowa’s religiosity.) But Santorum has seen a considerable spike in search traffic there, as well as in South Carolina, where the next primary takes place on Friday, January 20. And so far for this week, searches for Santorum are on par with the other frontrunners.