Election 2012: the event that has produced an electorate awash in -- sometimes overloaded with -- information. The campaign that has seen the collision between Big Data and Big Politics. The phenomenon that brings the Information Age to bear on the grand experiment that is American democracy.

Here, with that in mind, is a chart tracking year-by-year interest in a particular Google search term. That term is ... "who is running for president." Theories welcome.

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