United States of Search Analysis: Parties, Candidates, and Primaries (March)

The United States of Search is an interactive piece of content exploring search and online media around the US election. Here is a look at some of stories emerging from the March data.

Ear­li­er this month, we released an inter­ac­tive piece of con­tent explor­ing search and online media around the US elec­tion. With the Unit­ed States of Search we looked at what peo­ple are search­ing for in Google, and also the web­sites and pages they are find­ing as a result. So what does this search data reveal about the US Elec­tion 2016?

How Much is Search Impacting the US Election?

Search is hav­ing mas­sive impact on the US Elec­tion. From Feb­ru­ary of this year, search vol­umes for elec­tion-based search­es increased to 69.3 mil­lion — in some cas­es, with vol­umes for indi­vid­ual key­words tripling on Novem­ber-Jan­u­ary aver­ages1. It’s pow­er­ful evi­dence of the role that search is play­ing when it comes to the way vot­ers are seek­ing addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion dur­ing a major polit­i­cal elec­tion.

Per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, the major­i­ty of these search­es are from peo­ple look­ing for infor­ma­tion about the can­di­dates them­selves. Google Trends shows a sig­nif­i­cant increase in search vol­umes for ‘Don­ald Trump’ and ‘Bernie Sanders’ for exam­ple. As the fol­low­ing graph illus­trates, all the Repub­li­can and Demo­c­rat can­di­dates still run­ning a cam­paign for office have expe­ri­enced a notable increase in search vol­umes in the past few months.


Sim­i­lar­ly, there has also been a increase search activ­i­ty around indi­vid­ual top­ics and cur­rent affairs. On par­tic­u­lar points of polit­i­cal con­tention in the US, such as ‘gun con­trol’ or ‘immi­gra­tion’, vot­ers are using search to con­duct fur­ther research of a can­di­date or par­ty, pre­sum­ably to see if their stance aligns with their own per­son­al views.

This is a impor­tant devel­op­ment, for in pol­i­tics, where bat­tle lines are often drawn around such top­ics. Search­es such as ‘Don­ald Trump immi­gra­tion’, ‘Ted Cruz gun con­trol’, or ‘Bernie Sanders mar­i­jua­na’, for exam­ple, (and the con­tent peo­ple sub­se­quent­ly find) like­ly act as influ­en­tial touch-points in vot­er deci­sion-mak­ing jour­neys.

And increas­ing­ly, the impact that search hav­ing on pol­i­tics is being explored in greater depth. Ear­li­er this month Justin Wolfers of The New York Times wrote on the strong cor­re­la­tion between surges of elec­tion day search­es for a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date and the share of vote that can­di­dates were win­ning.

It’s not a crazy idea. After all, who among us hasn’t searched for reviews of a car, a stereo or a phone on the day of buy­ing it? And if we do this when we’re shop­ping, who’s to say that peo­ple don’t do the same on Elec­tion Day?”

- Justin Wolfers, The New York Times

It’s not an unfea­si­ble propo­si­tion. Research increas­ing­ly shows that organ­ic search is the chan­nel of choice for con­sumers when research­ing or eval­u­at­ing a pur­chase deci­sion2 — and nat­u­ral­ly there’s no rea­son why search shouldn’t be the chan­nel vot­ers turn also when they are look­ing to research or eval­u­ate a vot­ing deci­sion.

Thus with the Unit­ed States of Search, we sought to explore search and online media around the US Elec­tion beyond the typ­i­cal stud­ies of search vol­ume and top­i­cal inter­est. Using the Linkdex plat­form we also looked to gain an under­stand­ing also of the con­tent that vot­ers are see­ing, and one way or the oth­er, are influ­enced by.

What is the United States of Search?

The Unit­ed States of Search looks at the pop­u­lar­i­ty of indi­vid­ual can­di­dates, top­ics, web­sites, and pages, pre­sent­ing a view of how search behav­iour and con­tent con­sump­tion varies state by state, and over time (each month we will update the resource with the lat­est search data, cre­at­ing a his­tor­i­cal record of search all the way up until the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Novem­ber).

We designed the resource to be an inter­ac­tive tool allow­ing jour­nal­ists and mar­keters alike to explore the data, find sta­tis­tics, and dis­cov­er their own sto­ries. Across the resources’ many pages, you can view the data at a nation­al lev­el, seg­ment­ed by indi­vid­ual states, or by any indi­vid­ual can­di­date (where data incor­po­rates search­es where a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date is ref­er­enced).

In the mean­time here are some ini­tial insights we’ve gleaned from the March data.

March Analysis: Search Popularity of Parties and Candidates

Republicans vs Democrats

First things first — what does the Unit­ed States of Search look like when we total search vol­umes for any search which ref­er­ences either the Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat par­ty, or any of the can­di­dates that have run for either of the main par­ties.

repvsdem

The above visu­al­iza­tion shows the per­cent­age dif­fer­ence for any Republican/Democrat search from the nation­al US mean. In oth­er words, in Texas where 78.7% of search­es are for the Repub­li­can par­ty or any of their par­ty can­di­dates, we say the state has 4.1% per­cent­age dif­fer­ence from the US aver­age in favour of the Repub­li­cans (where the US aver­age for Repub­li­can search­es is 74.6%).

Essen­tial­ly, this visu­al­i­sa­tion allows us to view the extent to which state spe­cif­ic searchers are more like­ly to search for some­thing that ref­er­ences either the Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat par­ty, or any of their can­di­dates.

(N.B. It’s fair to assume that Repub­li­can search­es vast­ly out­num­ber the equiv­a­lent Demo­c­rat search­es at the moment due to the com­pet­i­tive­ness and height­ened media cov­er­age around the cur­rent Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion sched­ule.)

Observations

  • Clear increased search inter­est for Repub­li­cans in the so-called ‘Deep South’ (name­ly South Car­oli­na, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Flori­da, Alaba­ma, Geor­gia, Louisiana, and Texas).
  • Arkansas, Ten­nessee, and Ken­tucky also have greater search inter­est for Repub­li­cans than aver­age.
  • Much of New Eng­land has greater search inter­est for Democ­rats, espe­cial­ly so in the state of Ver­mont (Bernie Sander’s home state) which reg­is­ters an aston­ish­ing 29.9% greater than aver­age search inter­est, in the main due to key­word vol­ume for the ‘Bernie Sanders’.
  • Greater Demo­c­ra­t­ic search inter­est in New Eng­land is with the notable excep­tions of New Jer­sey, Penn­syl­va­nia and Mary­land (typ­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered to be strong Demo­c­rat states) which, at least in regards to search vol­umes, are lean­ing Repub­li­can.
  • The Mid­west and West gen­er­al­ly has a greater search inter­est for the Democ­rats, with the notable excep­tions of Ida­ho, Utah, and Ari­zona.

Analysis

Whilst it’s clear that search vol­umes do not cor­re­late entire­ly with typ­i­cal state vot­ing pref­er­ences, to a large extent they do. Search in the Deep South, the Mid­west, and the West­ern Pacif­ic states are aligned with typ­i­cal vot­ing expec­ta­tions3.

That search inter­est should be gen­er­al­ly aligned to typ­i­cal vot­ing expec­ta­tions is not unsur­pris­ing, and coin­cides with Google’s impli­ca­tion; that increased search inter­est for a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date cor­re­lates direct­ly with vot­ing pref­er­ence.

There are how­ev­er, notable excep­tions in New Jer­sey, Penn­syl­va­nia and Delaware — typ­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered strong Demo­c­rat states — which espe­cial­ly in the case of New Jer­sey indi­cate increased search inter­est in Repub­li­cans.

Okla­homa, Wyoming, and Mon­tana — con­sid­ered strong Repub­li­can ter­ri­to­ry, also defy typ­i­cal expec­ta­tions, exhibit­ing a greater pref­er­ence for Demo­c­rat relat­ed search­es.

Are there any fea­si­ble expla­na­tions for these dis­par­i­ties? To get to the bot­tom of the mat­ter, we took a clos­er look at what exact­ly peo­ple were search­ing for in these states.

Further analysis

On the first point, New Jer­sey exhibits a 3.9 per­cent greater than aver­age inter­est in Repub­li­can search terms, and this can to a large extent this can be attrib­uted to Chris Christie — the New Jer­sey Gov­er­nor (who albeit recent­ly with­drew from the pres­i­den­tial race). Christie draws a 4.5 greater search inter­est in his home state over nation­al aver­age, and this vol­ume accounts to an extent for the state’s Repub­li­can lean­ings in search.

christie_nj

To a less­er extent, this effect can also be seen in neigh­bour­ing state Delaware, where searchers for the New Jer­sey Gov­er­nor are 1.9 per­cent high­er than the nation­al aver­age.

In Wyoming, Mon­tana, and Okla­homa, which lean blue in search, we found that a great deal of the demo­c­ra­t­ic search vol­umes were for the key­words ref­er­enc­ing ‘bernie sanders’ and ‘hillary clin­ton’. Search­es ref­er­enc­ing Sanders were high­er than aver­age in Mon­tana and Okla­homa, marked­ly so in the lat­ter, where searchers for the can­di­date were 2 per­cent greater than the nation­al aver­age. Wyoming and Mon­tana on the oth­er hand exhib­it­ed greater inter­est in Hillary Clin­ton, by 2.3 and 6.6 per­cent dif­fer­ence over aver­age respec­tive­ly.

Swing States

Over­all, with the notable excep­tion of Wyoming and Mon­tana, there cer­tain­ly does seem to be a notable cor­re­la­tion between over­all search inter­est and the expect­ed vot­ing behav­iour of indi­vid­ual states (based on his­tor­i­cal results).

Per­haps where the data can be most indica­tive is in swing states, where any indi­ca­tion of vot­er sen­ti­ment can be a valu­able sig­nal. The fol­low­ing chart illus­trates their polit­i­cal lean­ings with regards to search:

Where­as Flori­da and Ohio are both indi­cat­ing sig­nif­i­cant pref­er­ence over aver­age for Repub­li­cans, this is per­haps accen­tu­at­ed by the home state advan­tages of Mar­co Rubio (Flori­da) and John Kasich (Ohio). With nei­ther can­di­date stand­ing a real­is­tic chance of win­ning the nom­i­na­tion, it is dif­fi­cult to place any mean­ing­ful pre­dic­tion based on search behav­iour.

Iowa, with a less than 1 per­cent Repub­li­can pref­er­ence, is per­haps too close to call, but inter­est­ing New Hamp­shire and Neva­da both exhib­it a slight Demo­c­ra­t­ic lean­ing.

Where there is clear par­ty pref­er­ence with­in swing states is in Vir­ginia, which exhibits a 3.9 per­cent pref­er­ence for Repub­li­can search­es, and Col­orado which has a 7.2 per­cent pro­cliv­i­ty for Democ­rats in search over the nation­al aver­age, the sec­ond great­est pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence for the Democ­rats in any indi­vid­ual state after Ore­gon.

So could it be that search is indi­ca­tion that Vir­ginia will vote Repub­li­can and Col­orado Demo­c­rat come Novem­ber? Whether or not search can pre­dict over­all vot­ing behav­iour remains to be seen in the com­ing months.

Predictions

  • Vir­ginia to vote Repub­li­can and Col­orado to vote Demo­c­rat in the Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion

Remaining Unknowns

Why are Mon­tana and Wyoming exhibit­ing such high demo­c­ra­t­ic search vol­umes? Wyoming is often cit­ed to be the most Repub­li­can state in the US 4 so could this be a case of vot­er hap­a­thy man­i­fest­ing itself in low­er search inter­est? Do states with heavy polit­i­cal lean­ings there­fore under­ep­re­sent vot­er sen­ti­ment in search?

The Primaries and Caucuses

Much of the polit­i­cal activ­i­ty and cov­er­age over the last few months has been cen­tred around the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can pri­maries and cau­cus­es. For the results that have already come in, we have the advan­tage of look­ing at the results ret­ro­spec­tive­ly and see­ing where, if at all, that results have cor­re­lat­ed with search data.

The fol­low­ing chart shows search inter­est for Bernie Sanders, as com­pared to their over­all share of vote in the elapsed state pri­maries to date:

The results show that to a cer­tain extent a greater share of search vol­ume does coin­cide with a greater share of vote with­in a state pri­ma­ry.

Home state advan­tages yield the great­est devi­a­tions to this mea­sure­ment, and this reflects actu­al vot­ing. Bernie Sanders won the Ver­mont pri­ma­ry with a 86.1% per­cent share of the vote, the great­est win­ning mar­gin for any pri­ma­ry to date in the cur­rent elec­toral race. Accord­ing to our data, peo­ple in Ver­mont are 23.5 per­cent more like­ly to make a search ref­er­enc­ing Bernie Sanders than aver­age, which was also the great­est mar­gin when it came to search devi­a­tion for any state against the US mean.

The home state advan­tage can also be seen for John Kasich in Ohio, where the can­di­date was 4.7 per­cent more like­ly to be searched for than the US aver­age, and where he won the state pri­ma­ry with 46.8% of the vote.

kasich

Kasich has been peren­ni­al­ly trail­ing more than a few of his adver­saries, and Ohio has been the can­di­dates strongest state to date. How­ev­er the Ohio Gov­er­nor did man­aged a sur­prise sec­ond place in New Hamp­shire pri­ma­ry, win­ning 15.8 per­cent of the vote. This was reflect­ed in search where search inter­est of 2.7 per­cent over mean rep­re­sent­ed the great­est share of search in any state except Ohio.

To a sim­i­lar extent, Ted Cruz expe­ri­enced sim­i­lar height­ened search inter­est in his home state of Texas, where peo­ple were 5 per­cent more like­ly to make a search ref­er­enc­ing Ted Cruz than the nation­al aver­age. Cruz took 43.8 per­cent of the vote in the Texas pri­ma­ry to win the major­i­ty of del­e­gates, so it appears that this inter­est trans­lat­ed into votes.

Inter­est­ing­ly, search inter­est for Cruz in Iowa was also well above mean, at 3.9 per­cent greater than the nation­al aver­age and this may have been fuelled by his vic­to­ry in the states Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary.

Clinton vs Sanders

When it comes to the bat­tle between Clin­ton and Sanders, there are a few states in which one of the can­di­dates is receiv­ing a greater search inter­est over mean.

In Ore­gon, search inter­est in Sanders is 6.9 per­cent over mean, the sec­ond high­est for any state oth­er than Ver­mont. Could this be indica­tive of a strong Sanders turnout in the state pri­ma­ry on May 17th?

As touched upon ear­li­er Clin­ton receives a sur­pris­ing amount of search inter­est over mean in Wyoming (6.6%), Mon­tana (2.3%), and North (3.9%) and South Dako­ta (3.3%). Wyoming is the only of these states to have held a primary/caucus to dater, and it actu­al­ly went to Bernie Sanders — who per­formed less well than Clin­ton in search — where peo­ple in Wyoming were 3.3 per­cent less like­ly to make a search ref­er­enc­ing Bernie Sanders than US mean.

In this instance share of search inter­est does not pre­clude vot­ing behav­iour. How­ev­er, if forced to go out on a limb one could say that if Clin­ton could not trans­late strong search inter­est in Wyoming into votes, that she is even less like­ly to do so in neigh­bour­ing mid­west­ern states — mean­ing, that they could well go the way of Sanders.

New York and California

Of the remain­ing pri­maries, New York and Cal­i­for­nia are high­ly sought after by all the remain­ing can­di­dates from either par­ties. For both the Repub­li­cans and the Democ­rats, the bat­tle will a direct bat­tle between two can­di­dates.

Trump vs Cruz

If results of the pre­vi­ous two months are any­thing to go by, then Trump will be vic­to­ri­ous in both New York and Cal­i­for­nia — Cruz is per­haps too con­ser­v­a­tive to win pop­u­lar sup­port in states with pre­dom­i­nant­ly urban pop­u­la­tions. If the vot­ing does go this way, results will cor­re­late with search inter­est in these two states. Trump receives 2.6 per­cent in search inter­est in Cal­i­for­nia, and 1.1 per­cent in New York over US mean. Cruz on the oth­er hand, receives 1.1 per­cent less in Cal­i­for­nia, and 1.4 per­cent less in New York.

In the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries, the bat­tle is hard­er to call, for although Sanders seems to gen­er­ate a greater pro­por­tion of search inter­est in these two states, the states he has won to date have been those in which he has gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er search inter­est. Sanders does have 2.7 per­cent greater search inter­est in Cal­i­for­nia, and 1.6 per­cent in New York. Clin­ton has ‑0.1 per­cent search inter­est in Cal­i­for­nia, and 1.2 per­cent greater than aver­age search inter­est in New York.

If we take Wis­con­sin as a prece­dent — where Sanders had 1.2 per­cent greater search inter­est, and Clin­ton ‑0.7 per­cent. Sanders took a nar­row vic­to­ry in this state — sug­gest­ing he could do the same in Cal­i­for­nia. With his advan­tage less in New York, we’re going to have to give the state to Clin­ton.

Predictions

  • Trump to take New York and Cal­i­for­nia con­vinc­ing­ly.
  • Sanders to win Ore­gon, Mon­tana, and North and South Dako­ta.
  • Sanders to edge a close bat­tle over Clin­ton in Cal­i­for­nia.
  • Clin­ton to win New York.

Final Thoughts

Admit­ted­ly this is far from a sci­en­tif­ic study of search and pol­i­tics. The above analy­sis is intend­ed to be a per­spec­tive of cur­rent progress in the US Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion — as informed by search. Whilst it has unearthed some of the intri­ca­cies between search inter­est and vot­er pref­er­ence but while there are some cor­re­la­tions, it clear there is also great deal of unique nuance here.

Over­all, search inter­est can be viewed as an indi­ca­tor of vot­er sen­ti­ment — to an extent. It’s worth not­ing that whilst our data is in many respects, rea­son­ably com­pre­hen­sive, cer­tain­ly in its key­word and geo­graph­ic scope, it doesn’t take account of poten­tial­ly key data-points such as date or time of day.

Stay tuned for fur­ther analy­sis on the Unit­ed States of Search. Next time we’ll be explor­ing top­ics, web­sites and page vis­i­bil­i­ty.

Research and Methodology

Our research began by col­lat­ing a key­word list to cov­er a full spec­trum of polit­i­cal search­es in the US. This includ­ed all can­di­dates from either the Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat par­ty to announce a cam­paign in Novem­ber 2015, polit­i­cal search terms such as ‘us elec­tion’ or ‘swing states’, and a full range of polit­i­cal top­ics and issues rang­ing from ‘gun con­trol’ to ‘health care’, ‘cli­mate change’, or ‘islam­ic state’, to name a few — and also includ­ed com­bi­na­tions of these terms such as ‘ted cruz gun con­trol’.

Search vol­umes were then obtained from pub­licly avail­able Google search data for the peri­od between Novem­ber 2015 and Jan­u­ary 2016 seg­ment­ed by each indi­vid­ual state. Key­words were then tagged and cat­e­gorised into rel­e­vant enti­ties, so we could see the vol­ume of search­es being con­duct­ed for any search­es ref­er­enc­ing either the Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat par­ty, any indi­vid­ual can­di­date, or any indi­vid­ual top­ic or issue.

To find out what con­tent searchers were vis­it­ing as a result of their search­es, we used the Linkdex SEO plat­form to ascer­tain which web­sites were win­ning share of search for any of these key­word groups, for each indi­vid­ual state. Fol­low­ing, are a few exam­ples of how the data can be com­pared and cross-ref­er­enced (and I think you’ll agree with some inter­est­ed results).

You can find out more about the method­ol­o­gy behind our research here.


Contributors

  • Pat Hong

    Pat Hong

    Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

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