Election Day has arrived. The stakes are high this year with a country in the middle of a pandemic. So, what is on the minds of American’s over the last year, days and today? Here is a look at just a few of the US Elections Google search trends.
Presidential Candidate
While looking at these trends on candidates and issues it is important to recall that search data indicates interest, and it should not be considered the actual voter choice. Over the past day, Democratic nominee, Joe Biden heads the search trends with 49% while President Donald Trump accounted for 44% of the candidate searches.
Looking at a longer period (12 months), search interest in President Trump has been significantly larger than Joe Biden. This could be in part to him being a big newsmaker and the coronavirus pandemic.
Top Rising Terms- Waves of Interest
There is a particularly interesting new Waves of Interest page that is a collaboration of Google News initiative and Truth & Beauty. They explore patterns in Google search data from 2004-2020. One of the top terms that have been rising from prior elections was ‘Electoral fraud.’ This has seen an increase of 361% compared to other election years.
Terms with the highest interest this year include obvious topics like unemployment, Supreme Court, and racism that have dominated news headlines and American lives. The majority of the top 2020 election topic searches appear to be skewed toward social issues.
2016 painted a drastically different picture. While electoral fraud was a top search both years, the terms during that election centered less around social issues but rather, the election itself and political terminology.
Big Interest Issues
Since 2004, Google has begun tracking important social issues that arise in election years. What ranked in at the top this year? Unemployment took that in spades followed by health care and crime.
Live Trends by the Minute
One of the more fascinating data visualizations we came across was Google Trends Electionland, which explores real-time 2020 Election Day voting issues in search by the minute! As of 10:30 am on November 3rd, long wait times, absentee ballot, and other voting issues are appearing. The site also includes a live banner scroll at the top with other spikes in search of various cities across the country.
Regardless of your political stance, 2020 Election Day will be one to watch! Did you see any trends that stuck out as particularly interesting? We’d love to know – fill out our contact form or comment below. Stay tuned to our blog for more updates on how search trends stacked up against the actual results in the coming days.
