Who attracted the most attention in the political world in 2022

The problem with compiling end-of-year lists in the modern era is that any number of world-historic crises can emerge in a 10-day period. As I write, it is Dec. 21, 2022; by the time Dec. 31 rolls around, it’s very possible that the central story in American politics will be President Grassley’s bilateral talks with the Alpha Centauri delegation in the ruins of Raleigh. Who knows! We live in interesting times, to our collective detriment.

Let us stipulate, then, that what follows is an assessment of how much interest was given political and politics-adjacent individuals in 2022 to this point. It is a week-by-week assessment of how much attention — measured in Google search interest and cable-news mentions — was given every seven days from Jan. 2 through Dec. 18. Should Centauri Potentate Klxor be the most-discussed entity of the post-Christmas period, it’s out of our hands.

To compile this analysis, I selected more than two dozen names that were subjects of interest in 2022. It’s an incomplete list, but one aimed at measuring how interest ebbs and flows and who — and where — people get the most attention.

Below, a chart showing Google search interest by week this year. Lines further to the left attracted more attention in a week. The weeks progress from January (at the top) to December (at bottom). Each line — representing the rise and fall of interest in a person — is colored relative to their initial position, letting you see general trends. In weeks where multiple people had the same search interest (little to none), they’re ranked according to their most recent prior value.

You can see that the two individuals who attracted the most attention were President Biden and former president Donald Trump. If we isolate them, you can see how search interest moved back and forth between them as the year progressed.

Later in the year, near the midterms, Biden was surpassed by candidates who were on the ballot. Trump remained a focus of search interest, in part because of his heavy-handed role in trying to shape the election outcomes.

An example of how the election period boosted candidates can be seen in losing Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. She attracted little search interest until she won the primary in August and then again when she lost in November.

Some of the year’s most important political names attracted attention only briefly. Cassidy Hutchinson, the aide to Trump’s chief of staff who provided crucial testimony to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, was not a focus of much attention until that testimony itself. At that point, the attention surged.

Now compare the attention granted Hutchinson in search — a reflection of general interest — with mentions of her on cable news. (If you’re curious, this is the weekly average of the percentage of 15-second blocks mentioning the individual on the three major cable-news channels.) There, attention on Hutchinson was much more sustained.

In fact, the cable news chart is a lot more intermingled than the search one. The purple-to-orange spectrum at the top is a jumble at the bottom, a reflection of the broader array of subjects included in cable news coverage.

Here, Trump and Biden were more consistently the top focal points.

I’ll interject at this point to offer this interactive version of the data above. The orientation of the graphs is from left-to-right mostly because of display limitations. Here, it’s top-to-bottom, with more interest at top. Each of the 50 indicated weeks is shown, from January at left to December at right. (Also worth noting: ties are indicated with overlapping dots here, which is why the chart often doesn’t extend all the way to the bottom.)

Here, I’ve also broken out cable-news channels individually. See how often Hunter Biden is mentioned on Fox News versus MSNBC! You may be surprised! (You will not be surprised.)

On cable news, we also see how the midterms drove attention. Sen.-elect John Fetterman (D-Pa.), for example, got some attention when he won the primary, but interest surged as his race against Mehmet Oz (R) heated up.

You’ll notice that we included Elon Musk on this list. Musk drew a lot of attention when he first announced his proposal to buy Twitter, with interest surging again once he was essentially forced by the courts to follow through in doing so.

But on Google, he’s consistently drawn more interest. Because he’s a celebrity.

Then there are those who were once political celebrities, in a way, but no longer are. Like Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), whose brief stint as an elected official comes to an end in January. He sporadically popped up on cable news until he lost his primary, and he has barely been heard from since.

That’s likely to change, however, once Potentate Klxor taps him to be the Centauri emissary to Venus II. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.