U.S. search engine queries about moving to Canada shot up Wednesday in the wake of Donald Trump’s decisive win in the presidential election.
According to Google, “move to Canada” began trending upward Tuesday night as the election results trickled in and surged in the overnight hours, hitting a peak around 6 a.m. Wednesday as people woke up to the news.
Search interest was highest in Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon and Minnesota – states where Vice President Kamala Harris won.
Other related searches included “how to immigrate to canada from us,” along with “best places to live in Canada,” and “how to get a visa for Canada.”
“Zillow in Canada” was another related query, with people searching for the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. house-hunting app.
A few other countries also garnered the attention of U.S. residents looking to flee elsewhere. U.S. users also searched for how to move to Australia, Switzerland, Denmark and Norway.
The top search result for “move to Canada” directs people to the federal government’s immigration page.
A spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada previously told CTV News that the government’s website is designed to handle surges in traffic.
“Canada.ca is specifically designed to automatically scale on demand to meet high levels of traffic,” the spokesperson said in an email.
According to preliminary results, Trump won the electoral college, as well as 50.9 per cent of the popular vote, making him the first president in more than 100 years to win a non-consecutive term in office. Grover Cleveland was the last president to do so back in 1893.
Trump has promised a tougher stance on immigration and U.S. border security. At the same time, Canada has scaled back the number of immigrants it plans to accept in a radical shift from the past few years.
With files from CTVNews.ca