Can Google predict the next president?
While watching the usual news channels it seems that 30 minutes can’t go by without the news anchor referring to the presidential election. It’s true with the election approaching upon us quickly it seems like a American can’t get enough coverage of it. What about people’s actual feelings on the matter. That is when they sit down at a computer and search for anything are people really that starved for information. Taking a look at Google trends for the last 12 months might shed some light on the topic. Also, is it possible that the number of times a candidate is searched for increases his probability of victory. Let’s take a look and see what the data tells us.
Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton
Figure 1: Last 12 month’s search and news references for Barack and Hillary
There are a number of observations we can see in Figure 1. First and most obvious is that Barack Obama is searched for more often than Hillary. Secondly, February 5th, Super Tuesday was around the height of the public’s interest in the matter. Finally, if the election would be held based on Google search phrases today then Barack would win vs. Hillary. How does this information correlate to the polls? As you can see by the Google trends the gap is closing in, and the polls show a very tight race at around 45% for each candidate. So, if Google trends are any estimation of victory then Obama should be out Hillary for the nomination.
Before we can believe these results it might be best to see how historically accurate Google trends is for predicting a winner. What other contest is as big if not bigger than the one for supreme office. That’s right you guessed it, American Idol. Since, American Idol is held every year and determined by the popular vote we can use Google trends on previous contest winners to see if Google would have predicted the outcome.
American Idol Season 6 - Top 4
 |
jordan sparks |  |
blake lewis |  |
melinda doolittle |  |
lakisha jones |
Figure 2. Google Trends for American Idol Season 6 Final 4
The data in Figure 2 is pretty clear. According to Google Trends the most popular contest was Blake Lewis, my personal favorite from last season as well, but he did not win. Using Google Trends to find the popular vote doesn’t necessary mean that those people who search actually vote. This can be seen to a even greater effect in the Google Trends data for Ron Paul and John McCain as shown in Figure 3. All-though initially leading in search results until around Super Tuesday when all hopes for a “revolution” were lost, those searches did not turn into vote.
|
ron paul | |
john mccain |
Figure 3. Google Trends for Ron Paul and John McCain in the Past 12 Months
Maybe this shows to the lack of motivation internet users have to vote, for American Idol or American President, or just plain laziness. If online voting were allowed maybe the results would have been drastically different.
Finally, estimating winners is not something Google Trends is good at. However Figure 4 and Figure 5 depicts how McCain would fair versus Barack and Hillary if the election were today. Either battle doesn’t look good for McCain.
|
barack obama | |
john mccain |
Figure 4. Google Trends for John McCain and Barack Obama for the Last 12 Months
|
hillary clinton | |
john mccain |
Figure 5. Google Trends for John McCain and Hillary Clinton for the Last 12 Months |