Right after each Presidential Debate both sides and all the big news organizations immediately conduct polls to determine how each candidate did and which issues resonated the most with voters. It is an expensive process that keeps an entire cottage industry of pollsters in business. But one of the best forms of instant voter feedback might be Google.
The most popular search terms during the last debate on Wednesday included “Roe v. Wade” and “Joe the Plumber.” But, less predictably, “charter schools” and “school vouchers” also seemed to hit a nerve. Or at least people wanted to learn more about them. When the candidates talked about a “litmus test” for nominating Supreme Court Justices that too sent people to their keyboards.
Maybe some people just wanted to know what a litmus test is and what it has to do with picking judges, or what the difference is between a charter school and a school voucher. The fact that people are searching for these terms tells us nothing about how they feel about them. But it does suggest that they want to learn more about them. That is an opportunity for each side to hone their message around education and judges, for example, in the final weeks of the campaign. Or they can just keep going negative. That seems to work too.
Now, what would be really great is if Google Trends offered up the option to see such live search trends by the hour. (The most granular you can get right now is the last 30 days). Maybe an engineer there can turn that into a new 20-percent project to disrupt the polling industry.
John McCain knows how to offer up the option to see live search trends. He knows how to do it my friends.
i see what you did there.
and I approve
John McCain @ david letterman’s … check it out
Yes, I watched. The ‘Old One’ made a few good points.
And once again, Letterman showed what he really is –and getting worse: misinformed, disrespectful, loud, arrogant, opinionated, and, most of all, an irrelevant has-been third-rate goofy talk show host.
He actually thought that he was setting up McCain, it turned out to be the other way around. Letterman shows every night that he is a pitiful brown-nosed idiot.
guess we will see a lot of blog adapting their headlines…
Come and read my latest blog post about how ACORN purged Joe the plumber using the litmus test and his views on Roe v. Wade. Also – charters + vouchers.
Who needs a coherent article when you’ve got keywords.
dave g and his fellow liberal’s snarkiness shall bite them in the ass someday.
//Don’t tax me bro
Yeap. And it will happen on November 4, when the half-black Messiah will bite the dust big time with his monkey face!
1st: Im not a liberal – Im a white, gun owning (few of ‘em), business owning military (war) veteran…not a neo-con, but definitely not a liberal.
2nd: Your an idiot (aka fool, half-wit, imbecile, dolt, dunce. A person of subnormal intelligence. A person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers. An unlearned, ignorant, or simple person, as distinguished from the educated; an ignoramus. A human being destitute of the ordinary intellectual powers, whether congenital, developmental, or accidental; commonly, a person without understanding from birth; a natural fool.)
3rd: I am 14 years old and live in the basement. And another thing: I am gay and very, very proud of it. There! Got it?
It’s tough to know which poll is most accurate based on the small number of people polled. However, the search terms give an idea of what issues are resonating among the public.
they must have been confused as to what a litmus test has to do with the supreme court.
Watch Joe the Plumber in action and watch John McCain Play the Penquin in Batman. Funny Stuff.
Hahahaha that was funny. Is this your idea of “natural lenguage locator”?
I type jeo plumber and go to a plumber network? Find a plumber near you !
I think Erik was being a bit hopeful – this says to me the common knowledge of voters is at a horrific low if people had to look up Roe vs Wade.
I just googled it too
Go locate yourself!
“…project to disrupt the polling industry” Good one Erick!!! Coming from a New York liberal!!!
Come to think of it, in this case, “disrupt” would mean make polling results more “truthful, reliable?” I guess…
But would never happen, just for the simple fact that people doing this are NOT. There is *always* a [natural] tendency to manipulate.
Case in point: during a casual conversation in Washington, George Stephanopoulos, commenting on the ABC Polls said [laughing] that when Obama started to lose points, all they have to do is ‘poll’ more democrats… Of course, this is not “manipulating” it is just “giving the peopls what they want”
BTW, in all the political polls, except one, democrats polled are *always* around 60% of the sampled… this percentage will likely increase, as Obama keeps bumbling, unable to expand on his plans and his true intentions.
And where do you live, Conspiracy Island?
Hanna – The ONLY on closer to reality is Zogby.com, which shows a significant ‘tightening’ with less than 2 points difference [today at noon]
You are pitiful.
You remind me of Hillary, with her ‘vast’ right conspiracies…
Plus, you are either ignoring facts, poll manipulation, or just drinking the half-black Messiah’s Kool-Aid.
Keep it on, and you and the ugly one will bite the dust on NOV 4…
What is really, really sad, is that you damn liberals are never able to come up with half-decent candidates. Remember ‘AlGore’ yuck, I am going to puke here…
You seem to have a very thin skin for a New Yorker. Are you one of ‘them metrosexuals?
[Metrosexual: homosexual male who is still in the closet]
One conclusion is that if both candidates mention the same thing 20+ times, its the main (only?) thing people remember. Sadly, it looks like the Google searchers are now experts on Joe (based on continued uptick of “Joe” searches at debtate’s end), but had no desire after the debate to do further research on any issues of substance.
pretty amazing stats
FYI, regarding “live search trends by the hour” you can use the Google Hot Trends hourly feed. It’s here:
http://www.goog...nds/atom/hourly
HTH
Yeah, but can you get those in a pretty graph?
Useless crap. Who cares what they google? How about posting something we care about.
Pretty cool how googling is a verb.
Check out http://www.Stea...AtTheTiller.com – funny.
very good
I’m curious if they filtered on just US people googling, and not the whole world. I know many Canadians that probably go to google.com (not google.ca)
Interested in voting WITHOUT knowing who your candidate is? This is a neat concept: http://www.votethequote.com
while on politics, is there any site that actually shows the total tax collection by the government for each of the last 8 yrs separated as business & personal.
And then compare that with the earnings by top 10% public companies in the US.
I know we have one of the highest corp tax but with all the loop holes and deductions, what is the net tax paid by these corporations.
Without this information no sane person can figure out what our new tax plan should look like.
Nobody. I repeat: NOBODY in the US can figure out the federal tax codes.
But it is irrelevant: individual or corporation, as long as you do not grossly violate the tax laws and you pay *something* you are OK.
Also: the ‘public big corporations’ are already taxed to the hilt. And also, we must ALL remember that these ‘public’ companies are *owned* by millions of shareholders, American and foreign, meaning that when the ‘big, bad’ public companies make billions of dollars, their shareholders make [very quietly] billions of dollars…
Ironic? Yes, and the snarky, slimy politicians will always take advantage of the public’s widespread ignorance.
[pass me another beer and we will watch Oprah again...]
That’s pretty cool. I know I didn’t google Joe the Plumber until after the debate. We had a debate watching party at my house and afterward everybody was curious. I can’t believe roe v. wade got so many hits though. Maybe people needing more detail?
Maybe. But there is no mistery here –the spike reflects searches from mostly single women, between 22 and 23 years of age.
Think about it.
Correction: 22 and 32 years of age.
How about the word, “fundamentally” or “fundamentals” .
I’m sure searchs for both words shot up like a rocket.
What an ironic way to drive traffic to your own website based on your newfound love of Google Trends – use all the hot keywords in your own post because you are discussing the phenomenon itself. Kudos.
I thought this site was funny. It relates to the Google search after the election.
http://lipnesstest.com
This is pretty interesting, but thinking about that now, when they started talking about Bill Ayers and the Weatherman Underground, I had a vague idea but I did a web search on WU just to know more about it, so I guess I fall into the same group.
Nice analysis,
Another interesting way to look at the election is w/voter personalities. We have a cool app Election Patterns (http://apps.fac...onpatterns_int/) that shows composite personalities of Obama Voters, McCain Voters and Undecided Voters, and how you you compare. You can see how ‘people like you’ are voting and view the data via various demo/geo perspectives.
great find.