Election Polls And The Primary Games
What do all the numbers really mean?
We haven’t the resources at buxtohispano.com to properly conduct election polls, and I personally never put faith in polls anyway. They’re biased by design in how any given question is presented, not to mention limited to the opinions of those polled which are directly influenced by their life experiences and geography. In other words, I would say polls are a useless waste of time if somebody asked me.
However, being a little bit tech and Internet savvy there are ways to discover what real people are asking and looking for with regards to the primary races and candidates on their own. Without being presented any “loaded” or “slanted” questions, we can see what real common people want to know or see from candidates based on their very own, unprompted and unscripted actions online.
To do this we have to use the methods of Internet Marketers. No, not send out spam emails or place annoying pop-ups on web sites, what I’m talking about are the techniques that Internet Marketers use to stay on top of trends and passions so that they’re always positioned with the right products in-front of the right people. And the best part about this is that the major search engines provide most of the tools and data needed free of charge.
Using various software and programs that provide keyword tracking and analysis we can see exactly what average people are searching for that’s related to the elections and specific candidates.
Lets examine some of the results because they paint a slightly different picture than the media seems to be giving us about the Democratic primary race:
Searching For Candidates By Name
While the media tends to paint a picture of Senator Obama as being the favorite democratic candidate among online audiences, the numbers don’t add up to that:
Average daily number of people searching for Senator Obama: About 22,300
That number includes searches made by his name, his name prefaced with Senator along with several various and seemingly common misspellings of his name.
Average daily number of people searching for Senator Clinton: About 22,200
That number includes searches made by her name, her name prefaced with Senator and one lone misspelling that appeared.
If you look at those numbers it would appear to be almost dead even. Not the overwhelming landslide of Obama supporters online that the media has been touting.
Searching For Information On The Candidate’s Platforms
This one was a shocker for me. In fact, it almost makes me think we need to rethink allowing everybody to vote just because they reach a certain age:
Average daily number of searches for information on Senator Obama’s platform: 620
Average daily number of searches for information on Senator Clinton’s platform: 290
These numbers seem to suggest 2 things, first more people feel comfortable that they already know where Senator Clinton stands as demonstrated by the higher number of people looking for that information on Senator Obama, and second, that not nearly enough people care about the actual positions of either candidate to spend time researching them.
You can’t get a full understanding of any politician’s plans from stump speeches, it requires reading their outlines and proposals… but it doesn’t look like many people care to be bothered based on those numbers.
And Speaking of Speeches
Here was another interesting find in all that data:
Average daily number of searches for copies of Senator Obama’s speeches: 380
Average daily number of searches for copies of Senator Clinton’s speeches: 60
I knew Senator Obama was a great stump speaker, but he’s so good at talking that apparently 6 times as many people want to read his speeches after he gives them than do Senator Clinton.
Well, it shouldn’t really have surprised me, he makes you feel good about yourself when he talks so why wouldn’t you want to print that out and read it later? Though, I’m not clear exactly what that means with regards to the elections or him as a politician. Sure, we all like to feel good about ourselves, but Reagan did that same thing, and as I recall so did G.W. Bush for many of us at one point.
That isn’t a comparison of Senator Obama to Presidents Reagan or Bush, I’m simply pointing out that without substance behind the words they’re just words as prior administrations have shown us. I leave it to you to decide for yourself whether there is substance there or not with Senator Obama and Senator Clinton.
Of course, to do that you’d have to become interested in their positions and search for information on their platforms, which we’ve already seen almost nobody is doing.
How And Where Are They Campaigning
Finally, a look at the numbers on searches for information regarding the two campaigns. This is an odd one because it comprises the searches of people looking for information on campaign appearances as well as editorials and pundit commentary on the specific candidate’s campaign politicking, so take from these numbers what you will:
Average daily number of searches for information on Senator Obama’s campaign: 595
Average daily number of searches for information on Senator Clinton’s campaign: 577
What’s It All Mean?
Well, despite digging through mountains of information it appears that gaging the pulse of the American people is no easier when using actual data from their recorded moves and questions then it is when you just ask them, “hey, what’r ya thinkin’ ’bout the race?”
In other words, who knows what any of this really means? The only thing that seems clear to me from it is that overall there’s not much difference in the online interest of people between Senators Obama and Clinton, certainly not the mass movement of Obama favoritism that the media makes it sound like is happening.
Oh, and I also know that not nearly enough people care about the issues too, but I had long suspected that was the case anyway. We have deep political divides among us and often engage in atrocious debates and arguments over them, but at the end of the day they appear to just be excuses to argue and hate one another rather than meaningful concerns in our lives. At-least, that’s what the data suggests if you asked me.
NOTE: to be absolutely clear nothing in any of the research done for this writing identifies any specific person or company in any way. Nobody worries about Big Brother and data mining more than I, so let me assure you that the only data collected or looked at were the terms entered into search engines, the number of times each term has been entered over the past few months, and a statistical average of how many times per day each term is being searched for currently. Nothing unique or identifying of any person or company was included at any point. I should also point out that like polls, there is an inherent margin of error in this data, however the same margins exist equally across all of the terms examined, so while the specific averages listed may be off slightly, I believe them to be proportionately accurate.
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