Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton won big on Super Tuesday, and in what has become somewhat of a tradition, American voters responded by threatening “to move to Canada.”
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According to Google trends, searches for “How to move to Canada” and “how to move to Canada if trump wins” surged Tuesday after 8 p.m. as Trump won primaries in several states.
“Searches for ‘how can I move to Canada’ on Google have spiked +350% in the past four hours,” Simon Rogers, data editor for Google, wrote on Twitter.
Super Tuesday, the biggest day in the series of primaries leading up to the party convention that nominate U.S. presidential candidates, saw Trump and Clinton both win seven states increasing the likelihood of a showdown between the two in the November election. Delegates in 12 states were up for grabs Tuesday.
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U.S. voters flock to the polls to cast Super Tuesday ballots
While thousands turned out for Trump and Clinton victory speeches, others took to social media to lament the outcome and again threatened to move north of the border.
It seemed enough people visited Canada’s immigration website they were greeted by a warning: “You may experience delays while using the website. We are working to resolve this issue. Thank you for your patience.”
Toronto councillor Norm Kelly, something of a Twitter celebrity, directed many of his American followers to the site.
This is not the first time the American people have threatened a mass northern migration. Grumblings first appeared after Trump announced his presidential run and again after he won the New Hampshire primary.
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Idle threats of moving to the Great White North were also made during a national debate on allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S. and last June after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
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Americans looking to move to Canada have already received an offer from Nova Scotia radio host Rob Calabrese who created the “Cape Breton if Donald Trump Wins” website to show people the beauty of the island.
“It is a website meant to highlight the features of Cape Breton,” he said in a telephone interview with Global News in February. “And I guess it’s targeted towards Americans who would … not want to live in a country where Donald Trump is president.”
So, how many Americans follow through on the threat? According to numbers from Citizenship and Immigration Canada there was a roughly 20 per cent year-over-year uptick in permanent residents from the U.S. in 2005, following the re-election of Republican George Bush.
In the wake of Barack Obama’s first win in 2009 there was a 12 per cent decrease in Americans relocating to Canada followed by an eight per cent increase after Obama’s re-election in 2012.
*With a file from James Armstrong
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