The two most recent Republican debates have been on non-big-name channels. But they’re still drawing only about as much as the Democrats did — and the Democrats didn’t have Donald Trump in the pole position.

Even more interesting is how real-time Google traffic has shifted over the course of the debates. We assume — admittedly without much evidence — that Google traffic during a debates is some indicator of which candidates people are interested in. Google is, after all, the magic answer box to which we all turn. But Google queries about the candidates have dropped even more precipitously than Nielsen ratings. Ratings for the fourth debate were down 44 percent from the first one; Google interest was down 59 percent.