Less than two months before the state's presidential primary elections, former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and the state's own Sen. Amy Klobuchar are running a close race for Minnesotans' attention — that is, if their Google searches are any indication.

Weekly search data provided by Google for 2019 shows that among the fragmented field of candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, the attention of Minnesotans has veered between front-runners. Boosts in search interest often correlated with official campaign announcements, debate performances and other news relevant to the race.

Political analysts have long debated the usefulness of Google trends to gauge public sentiment in politics. Although most agree search queries cannot predict voter intent, the data have at times provided interesting indicators.

For instance, during 2016's presidential primaries, trends data showed significant interest in Sanders' candidacy before he went on to win Minnesota's caucus that year.

Google Trends indexes interest of a search term on a scale from 0 to 100. Those rated 100 have the maximum amount of interest for a time and location, and other scores are relative to that.