In New Zealand, where Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has managed to position herself as a global liberal role model despite governing a country with a population smaller than London's, government servers registered a surge in interest to migrate there.
The site had more than 11,000 visitors on Sunday, compared to less than 3000 visitors seven days earlier, according to officials. Google analytics showed a surge in related search queries in Australia.
Those seeking a way out were in luck, as migrating to New Zealand isn't much more difficult for Australians than it is for Americans to go to Europe on holiday. "If you are a citizen or permanent resident of Australia you don't need to apply for a visa to live and work in New Zealand," the country's immigration website states.
This almost certainly wasn't news to most Australians.
It also is unlikely that the surge in traffic will indeed translate into a substantial rise in Australians moving to New Zealand, as the US elections have previously proved.
Whereas announcing the imminent departure for Canada on social media was a largely effortless move for many, actually moving to Canada was not as big of a trend. Rather than causing a surge in US migrants to Canada, the Trump victory only resulted in a temporary uptick.
Information snippets, such as one day of search traffic, shouldn't be overinterpreted.
Another cautionary tale was Britons' rush to google "What is the EU?," hours after the country had voted to leave the European Union.
To Brexit's opponents, the anecdote served as evidence that few supporters of leaving the EU knew what they were getting themselves into at the time of the vote. But British EU opponents would have cautioned that a few thousands of Britons taking to Google may make for an online trend, but that it was at best a nonrepresentative, minor detail - and at worst a misleading effort to portray Brexit voters as unintelligent and unprepared.
The Internet, those critics maintained, had provided EU supporters with the tale they wanted to hear.
While temporary spikes in online search behaviour provide limited insights, the debate they cause can often be more telling.
In that context, last weekend's New Zealand immigration episode may be less an indication of a wave of Australians moving to New Zealand, and more a metaphorical expression of the extent of liberal Australians' frustration with their government - and their hopes for a Jacinda Ardern-style challenger.
The differences between Morrison and Ardern could hardly be more pronounced.
Morrison has portrayed himself as a defender of the country's influential coal industry and has resisted calls to cut emissions more significantly. He has largely shrugged off climate action protests.
Given that Australia's agricultural heartland - long a conservative stronghold - is now the most severely affected by climate change-induced droughts, liberals expected a growing momentum for their anti-coal calls there.
But so far, few farmers see climate change as the reason for the record droughts that are threatening their livelihoods, even as researchers maintain that Australia has already heated up by 1C over the last century.
In comparison, liberal Ardern has pursued a more far reaching climate change policy, banning all new offshore oil exploration last spring as part of an effort to make the country carbon neutral.
Whereas Ardern's government has just rolled out the world's first so-called well-being budget - focused on improving citizens' happiness instead of growing GDP - Australia's conservatives mostly ran on the promise to preserve economic growth. The liberal opposition Labor Party had campaigned for a more New Zealand-style approach, favouring high taxes to address social inequality.
Another difference between the two parties was their stance on immigration, with the conservatives pursuing tougher policies, including continuing to hold refugees in offshore centres, where several people tried to commit suicide after the election result was announced, according to AFP.
Unable to elect a government that vowed to change course, some of Australia's liberals instead began to explore options to become migrants themselves.
While New Zealand officials said they did not expect most of them to be serious, the 2020 US elections could become another test of whether Democrats are willing to keep living in a country run by a president they deem abhorrent.
