Politics and Elections Blog
Trends, tools and news from the Google Politics & Elections team
Searching the 2011 Iowa Straw Poll
Thursday, August 11, 2011
In just two days, Iowa voters will cast the first votes in the 2012 campaign at their traditional straw poll. The
Iowa Straw Poll
– so named because the results are non-binding and thus “as sturdy as straw” - is the first major event of the campaign. The nation’s political focus turns to Iowa starting tonight as eight of the announced candidates take the stage for the Fox News Ames Debate.
Iowans are rightfully proud of the role they play in presidential politics and take their responsibility seriously. They research the candidates. They investigate the issues. They’re engaged in the political process. That’s why the state makes for an interesting window to view the candidacies and issues through Google’s own data. As the country looks to Iowa, we thought it would be useful to examine what people in that state and across the country are searching for related to the 2012 Republican nomination.
Here’s what we found:
Michele Bachmann is the most searched
announced
candidate in Iowa right now, and nationally by a large margin.
Add in the names Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, and Bachmann still has the edge in Iowa.
But nationally, Perry becomes the current leader of search.
The most searched for issue in Iowa and across the country is jobs - by large margin.
And finally, the State of Iowa leads by a HUGE margin the number of searches for [
butter cow
]
Heading into the weekend,
[Michelle Bachmann] is the most searched-for announced candidate in Iowa.
She’s taken off and now far surpasses any other declared candidate, especially those that are attending the Straw Poll. If you look at the pack together, Congressman [Ron Paul] trails Bachmann in the number two spot, as do searches for Governor [Tim Pawlenty], Senator [Rick Santorum] and businessman [Herman Cain].
Nationally, the same trend stands up, even when those candidates who are skipping the Straw Poll are added to the mix. Across the country,
more people are searching
for [Michelle Bachmann] that are searching for Congressman [Ron Paul], Governor [Mitt Romney], Speaker [Newt Gingrich] and Ambassador [Jon Huntsman].
However, the search landscape changes dramatically when we include two much-discussed potential candidates: [Rick Perry] and [Sarah Palin]. In Iowa, where she has focused her campaign, [Michelle Bachmann]
retains her search lead
, but across the country she drops to the number two spot behind the currently surging [Rick Perry]. Without even entering the race, Governor Perry finds himself leading in search today.
Perry has some strong search momentum
as more voters across the country turn to Google to find out more information about his potential candidacy.
So that covers the candidates, what about the issues? In Iowa, the candidates are talking about health care reform, the national debt and ethanol among others. But, the top concern - and
most searched issue in Iowa
and
across the country
- this year is [jobs] - by a HUGE margin.
Republican Party officials are expecting more than
10,000 voters
to cast their vote on Saturday in Ames. But, that’s not the only big event taking place over the weekend.
Celebrating more than 150 years
, the Iowa State Fair includes highlights such as the the “fry everything” food booths to the famous butter cow. Don’t know what a butter cow is?
It is a life-size bovine crafted entirely of butter
and it is a huge part of the tradition at the Iowa State Fair. Iowa leads the country - by a huge margin -
in the number of searches
for [butter cow].
Here at Google, we are serious about our role in helping voters find information that is useful in the political process, and that’s why
we’re heading to Ames to participate in the Straw Poll with our Soapbox
. We’ll also be here from now until the General Election to help bring you a front-row seat to the race through a regular look at what’s happening online.
Posted by Ginny Hunt, Google Politics
Digital Politics in the Heart of Iowa
Monday, August 8, 2011
This Saturday, thousands of Iowans will flock to the center of the state to cast a vote for their preferred Republican Presidential candidate at the
Ames Straw Poll
. The Ames Straw Poll is held ahead of the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucuses and serves as an important indicator of strength of the candidates in the critical early state. Although many other states and organizations have adopted straw polls, the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa has become one of the most important during the election cycle. This decades-old campaign trail tradition keeps politics local and personal -- and this time, we’re making it digital.
The Iowa Republican
- a news site dedicated to producing original political commentary by and for Republicans - is kicking off the Iowa Republican Soapbox to bring the voices of local Iowans to the world. The Soapbox will let elected officials, candidates, and engaged Iowa Republicans speak out and have their say on issues and the direction of our country through
The Iowa Republican’s YouTube Channel
.
If you are planning on being in Ames on Saturday, August 13th, swing by our tent. We’ll have cold drinks, a roster of candidates stopping by and a spot for you on the Soapbox.
You’ve already made campaigns a more open political conversation using social media platforms like YouTube and Blogger, and now Google+. In the 2012 campaign, The Soapbox is our latest effort to help shift the balance back towards the voters. Everyday citizens across the globe are rolling up their sleeves, saying what they believe, and being heard.
As the country starts down the path to select our next President, we’re working to give you information and tools to be a larger part of the process from the beginning. We recently
announced
our participation in the Des Moines Register Debate to have candidates answer your questions in the final debate before the 2012 Iowa Republican Caucus. And we’re just getting started. We hope that a more open and local political conversation is useful to you, candidates, news organizations, and our democracy.
Posted by Ginny Hunt, Google Elections Product Manager
Engaging Civic-Minded Engineers to Reinvent nyc.gov
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
What do you get when you mix a city government that is prioritizing its digital presence with a homegrown, budding tech community?
Reinvent nyc.gov
, the City of New York’s first ever hackathon - an event where engineers meet to do collaborative programming. Held this past weekend at the entrepreneur campus
General Assembly
, the top prize at the hackathon was not money, but something even better: breakfast with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
To call redesigning nyc.gov a challenging task would be an understatement: Since its launch in 1996,
nyc.gov
has expanded from around 1,000 pages to over 500,000, covering every city agency and task force. The number of yearly visitors to City-run web pages (
33 million, or 24 million for nyc.gov
) is approaching that of visitors to Central Park (37 million), according to New York City’s Chief Digital Officer
Rachel Sterne
. Of course, over the course of 2 days, the goal was to generate ideas and prototypes for the redesign.
The event kicked off with welcomes from city officials who framed the event and gave a glimpse of the city’s digital future. Deputy Mayor for Operations for New York Steve Goldsmith said, “we want to be transparent in a usable way, and encourage collaborative decision making.”
As a tech partner, Google demoed developer tools for Maps, YouTube, and Android, and held office hours for the over 60 participants from New York to Kansas to California. As teams formed, a few of us also participated as designers and developers.
The Google team (from left to right): Ginny Hunt (Public Sector & Elections), Jeffrey Posnick (YouTube), Jenny Ye (Public Sector & Elections), Adam Koch (Android), Hilary Worden (google.org), Arnaud Sahuguet (google.org)
Less than 36 hours later,
submissions
were in, and the demos began. By and large, teams presented UIs that were search-centric, user-focused, and social. Some envisioned the new
nyc.gov
as not only making it easier to find information but also making it easier to connect with city officials and other New Yorkers. Participants also voiced their hopes for more machine-readable data and more APIs. After the judges deliberated, awards were presented in the categories of
Best Use of Local
,
Best Use of Social
,
Best User Interface
,
Most Innovative
, and
Judge’s Choice
. Moving forward, we hope that the New York City moves quickly in its redesign of
nyc.gov
and uses some of the new ideas produced this weekend.
Participants and judges gather for demos and awards (photo from NYC Digital)
Hackathons organized by cities are not a new phenomenon - earlier this month, Google Chicago hosted an
Apps for Metro hackathon
with the City of Chicago - but there’s much more that can be done. Rachel Sterne, who worked to put together Reinvent
nyc.gov
, wrote about the
advantages
of city-led hackathon efforts. Perhaps
NYC Digital
’s slogan - “technology in the public service” - sums it up bests: by opening up access to more interesting, real-time data and and making the public sector more participatory, governments will be able to tap into engineering resources of its citizens and build a sustainable community of civic hackers.
Posted by Arnaud Sahuguet, Product Manager,
google.org
and Jenny Ye, Public Sector & Elections Intern
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