Here's what people are searching for — and posting about— the election

Celebrities talk election through social media Tuesday, 8 Nov 2016 | 8:55 PM ET | 01:20

The internet has played an unprecedented role in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, and Election Night was no exception.

“Government ethics” was the top policy issue discussed in Facebookposts as of 7 p.m. ET, the company said. Abortion and immigration were the top-searched topics on Google, according to Google Trends.

Over 7.5 million people shared on Facebook in the U.S. that they had voted. Most penned posts about religion, racial issues, crime and criminal justice and the economy, Facebook data showed. The two major party candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, also battled for mentions on the social media platform.

From 12 a.m. ET to 6 p.m. ET, 25 million global tweets were related to #Election2016, Twitter said.

Meanwhile, race issues and the economy also dominated Google search, followed by the Affordable Care Act, ISIS, gun control, climate change, the voting system and the national debt. Other highly searched topics were results in key states, including Florida, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina, Google said.

On a lighter note, searches for “election drinking game” also spiked, Google said, as did searches for “pray for Trump.”

Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg highlighted the effect of the election in the companies’ recent earnings reports.

“We saw record-breaking interest from the YouTube community,” Pichai said. “In fact, the three debates rank as the three most-viewed political livestreams of all time on YouTube, with over 8.5 million hours watched live, a 5x increase from the 2012 debates.”

Zuckerberg estimated that Facebook’s “Register to Vote” link helped more than 2 million people sign up to vote, some for the first time.

“Facebook really is the new town hall,” he said.

source”cnbc”

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