Politics and Elections Blog
Trends, tools and news from the Google Politics & Elections team
Top related searches for Romney and Gingrich in Florida
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
As voters cast their ballots in Florida’s Republican presidential primary today, we wondered: What candidate-related issues are Floridians searching for? We took a look at the two frontrunners in
recent polls
.
We found that for Mitt Romney, his bio is most searched, followed by issues about his taxes, net worth and his father George. For Newt Gingrich, searches are most commonly for his wife Callista, his ethics violations, wives and scandals generally.
According to the
New York Times
, 92% of the political ads airing in Florida right now are negative. Could these ads be impacting what voters are searching for when they look up Gingrich and Romney?
Posted by Samantha Smith, Google Politics & Elections Team
Who and what were Floridians searching for during last night's debate?
Friday, January 27, 2012
Last night, the four remaining GOP candidates
took the stage in Jacksonville
, Florida for what was the last Presidential debate until February 22. With the Florida primary just days away and Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich
neck and neck in the polls
, the candidates sparred on a diverse list of topics, ranging from Romney and Gingrich’s ties to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to whether the US should establish a colony on the moon.
We at Google Politics & Elections closely monitored Florida search trends to determine which candidates and issues experienced a rise in search interest. In the first graphic below, we noted which search terms surged during the debate.
The second graphic displays which candidates experienced the strongest increase in searches over the course of the event.
Posted by Samantha Smith, Google Politics & Elections Team
In Raleigh, the Mayor-Elect Turned to the Web for the Win
Thursday, January 26, 2012
(From time to time we feature creative or interesting uses of our tools and ad platforms from campaigns and issue advocacy groups. These mentions and examples should not be construed as an endorsement. - Ed.)
Back in October of 2011, voters in Raleigh, North Carolina turned out and elected Nancy McFarlane as Mayor of Raleigh with 34,424 votes -- and 63,683 views on YouTube. Yep. Almost 2 video views for every vote.
As recently as 2008, online ads were largely the province of Presidential campaigns, with the Obama campaign in particular heralded for its success. In 2010,
we chronicled how even more campaigns caught on to the web
. Now in 2011 local candidates like McFarlane are taking advantage of new formats and targeting options on search, display, and online video to persuade voters, win the
“Zero Moment of Truth”
and drive turnout efforts.
Taken just last week,
our South Carolina poll with Public Opinion Strategies
further cements the notion that voters - of all types - are tuning in to web videos in big numbers. The data shows that more than one out of every three primary voters had watched a video online from a campaign - thus the idea of watching a web video on one's lunch break is the new 'prime time news'. It is plain to see that video on the web is not something that campaigns, up and down the ballot, can afford to ignore.
The Raleigh race - because it took place in an off-year - was expected to have low voter turnout. Sagar Sane, the campaign manager for Nancy McFarlane for Mayor decided that an added emphasis on online ads would allow the campaign to target likely voters and core demographics that they knew would be receptive to their message.
The first tool that the campaign utilized was
TrueView Video Ads
- a pre-roll video ad format that only became available to candidates in 2010. The McFarlane campaign was able to successfully target relevant content and audiences on YouTube--only paying when Raleigh-area voters actually chose to watch the ads, and making the format more effective and efficient for the race than broadcast or cable television could have been for the campaign.
But the campaign didn't stop with video. Beyond YouTube, they began to target sites, audiences, and specific content themes across the internet with the Google Display Network - utilizing display ads like the one pictured here above. That meant that when voters in Raleigh were reading online about local politics or looking for their polling place, they likely came across a relevant McFarlane ad. For a race that took just 34K votes to win, the McFarlane campaign ran a cost-effective digital campaign that received 3.8 million impressions on Google’ Display Network ads alone.
Google Search ads complemented this strategy, allowing the campaign to talk to voters as they researched the race and looked for information in the Raleigh area. When McFarlane won endorsements first from the outgoing mayor and then from the Raleigh News & Observer, the campaign was able to move quickly, spreading the word by bidding on local news searchers and linking directly to the endorsements, highlighting this important third-party validation.
With races all across the country heating up for the 2012 cycle, campaigns at every level are getting savvier about their online strategy. Like Nancy McFarlane, they’re utilizing new digital tactics to win the
‘Zero Moment of Truth’
--and win their elections.
Posted by: Andrew Roos, Google Politics & Elections Team
Who and what were State of the Union viewers searching for?
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Last night, President Obama delivered his annual
State of the Union address
in front of Congress. In approximately an hour and a half, the President touched on numerous issues, both domestic and foreign; this is also true for Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who delivered
the Republican response
to the State of the Union.
With such a buffet of issues and people name-checked during Obama’s speech, Google Politics & Elections took a look at what search terms experienced substantial increases during the event.
In the first graphic, we focused on issue-specific words, finding Iraq to have the sharpest spike in interest during the speech:
In the second graphic, we narrowed the field to the names of individuals that increased in nationwide searches. Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who announced recently she would step down from her seat to focus on her recovery, trended only slightly behind Gov. Daniels.
Posted by: Samantha Smith, Google Politics & Elections Team
Your Interview with President Obama
Monday, January 23, 2012
(Cross-posted from the
Official YouTube Blog
)
If you could hang out with President Obama, what would you ask him? Would your question be about jobs or unemployment? The threat of nuclear weapons? Immigration reform? Whatever your question is, submit it on YouTube for the opportunity to ask the President directly in a special interview over a Google+
Hangout
from the White House.
On Monday, January 30, a few days after delivering his State of the Union address to the nation, President Obama will answer a selection of top-voted questions you’ve submitted in a live-streamed interview. Starting today through January 28, you can visit the
White House YouTube channel
to submit your video and text questions and vote on your favorites. Your YouTube questions will drive the interview, and several participants with top-voted questions will be selected to join the President in the Google+ Hangout to take part in the conversation live.
So take out your camera, check your hair and go to
youtube.com/whitehouse
to submit your question now. Need ideas? Visit
youtube.com/whitehouse
on Tuesday night to watch the President’s State of the Union address live. The address will be followed by the Republican response on
Speaker Boehner’s YouTube channel
.
Video questions are preferred (though we also accept text) and should be about 20 seconds long. In the video description, be sure to tell us a little bit about yourself, like where you’re from.
Your Interview with President Obama will be streamed live at 5:30 p.m. ET on January 30 on
youtube.com/whitehouse
. You have until midnight ET on January 28 to submit your question and make your voice heard on the issues that matter to you.
Posted by: Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager, recently watched, “
How to Buy a Car, Using Game Theory
”
How did the GOP debates impact South Carolina Google searches?
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Much has been written about Newt Gingrich’s surge over the last week, including a Google Politics & Elections
post
showing a nearly 700% jump in South Carolina searches for the former Speaker.
In the graphic below, we tracked South Carolina searches for the four remaining candidates over that time period. As you can see, though Gingrich experienced the largest search surge, Santorum also saw a sharp uptick and even surpassed Ron Paul to take second place today. This is especially relevant given that exit polls
indicate
half of all South Carolina voters “made up their minds in the last few days.”
Posted by: Samantha Smith, Google Politics & Elections Team
What South Carolinians want to know about Romney and Gingrich
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Because negative stories about a political candidate are often just as newsworthy as positive ones, it’s often helpful to go beyond mere search volume when analyzing which candidate-related issues have gained traction.
Yesterday,
we published
a graphic showing a 698% surge in South Carolina search traffic for Newt Gingrich since Monday. For the graphics below, Google Politics & Elections analyzed which search queries South Carolinians typed most often into Google in relation to Gingrich and Mitt Romney.
As you can see, at least three of the top four searches associated with Gingrich have to do with the candidate’s current and former wives, which may be the result of a
Nightline interview
given to Gingrich’s ex-wife Marianne on Thursday. The fourth most-searched query, [newt scandal], may be a direct result of this interview as well.
The top four queries associated with Romney were much less issue-specific. They instead focus on more general biographic details and his campaigning in South Carolina:
Posted by: Eric Hysen, Google Politics & Elections Team
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