WebProNews

Tag: election 2012

  • Elections, iPhone 5, and Kim Kardashian Top 2012 Yahoo Searches

    As the month of December rolls along, you can expect more and more of these types of lists to pop up. It’s that time of the year for the year-in-review wrap-ups, and today it’s Yahoo that’s giving us some insight on top searches in 2012.

    The top three Yahoo searches in 2012 come from three different realms: politics, tech, and pop culture. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Yahoo users were most interested in the Elections, the iPhone 5, and Kim Kardashian (in that order). Yahoo says that in the 12 years that they’ve been doing the year-in-search list, this is only the third time that a “news” event has claimed the number one search volume slot. The other two were recent events, Michael Jackson’s death in 2009 and the BP oil spill in 2010.

    Here’s the complete top ten list of 2012 Yahoo searches:

    1. Elections
    2. iPhone 5
    3. Kim Kardashian
    4. Kate Upton
    5. Kate Middleton
    6. Whitney Houston
    7. Olympics
    8. Political Polls
    9. Lindsay Lohan
    10. Jennifer Lopez

    Bing recently unveiled their 2012 search stats and there’s quite a bit of similarity among the two lists. Over on Bing, Kim Kardashian was the most-searched person of the year, beating out Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. In the news stories category, the iPhone 5 took the crown beating out the 2012 Elections and the 2012 Olympics.

    When you just look at gadget searches, it’s Apple all the way. In that category the iPhone 5 finished ahead of “iPad 3” and the “iPad mini.” The rest of the top ten gadget searches were the Samsung Galaxy S3, Kindle Fire, iPhone 4, Nook, iPod Touch, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Samsung Galaxy Note.

  • Nate Silver, Master Prognosticator, Talks to Google’s Chief Economist

    Nate Silver became a household name this past election season, as his election predictions wound up being the subject of some partisan bickering. Whether you loved him or hated him in the final months of the campaign, he was vindicated on election day when he nearly perfectly called every race – 31 out of 33 state Senate races, as well as all 50 states in the Presidential race. Working out of his statistics blog FiveThirtyEight.com, Silver has become one of the most (if not the most) accurate prognosticator in modern polling.

    He recently sat down with Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian to discuss his bestselling book “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t” (among other things).

    The interview, part of Google’s popular Authors at Google series, is available in its entirety below:

  • Young, Female, Democratic Voters Wanted to Share It on Facebook

    If you logged onto Facebook on election day, you probably remember that the social network did their part to get out the vote by displaying a big voting reminder above U.S. voters’ news feeds. “It’s election day, VOTE!” it said. From there, users could either find their voting place via Facebook polling place locator, or they could click the “I’m a voter” button and add to the tally of Facebook users who did their civic duty on November 6th.

    Today, Facebook has released a bunch of data from election day, including a demographic breakdown of who clicked that “I’m a voter” button.

    First off, the big number – over 9 million users said they voted on Facebook.

    Next, Facebook’s data decisively shows that women were much more likely to share the fact that they voted with the Facebook community – almost twice as likely, in fact. Facebook makes a point to say that it shouldn’t surprise us, considering women are twice as likely to share on Facebook in general (comments, likes, status updates).

    They also looked at the Facebook voting in relation to political affiliation. Users with democratic beliefs were more likely to click “I’m voting.” In fact, users that labelled themselves as affiliated with Barack Obama, Democratic, Liberal Democratic, Very Liberal, Liberal, and Green were all the most likely to say they voted on Facebook.

    And as you would expect, the younger the user, the more likely they were to click “I voted” – no matter the political affiliation.

    Some more interesting aspects from the study show that users that liked “Binders full of women” and “Big Bird” were the most likely to share their voting status on the network.

    You can read the full report here.

  • Bronco Bama Girl Is Happy That President Obama Won

    Remember that cute little 4-year-old girl who became the country’s unofficial spokesperson for how sick we all were of the 2012 Presidential election? Sure you do – her mother uploaded a video of her crying over how tired she was of “Bronco Bama” and Mitt Romney, and we all let out a collective “I’m with you, girl.”

    Well, here’s the followup. Unlike some Americans, Abbie the “Bronco Bama” girl seems happy that the President was reelected.

    “Abbie is a most amazing little girl–brilliant, gorgeous and hilarious. I am so proud of her, and cannot believe how privileged I am to have her as my daughter. This has been a fun ride, and we are amazed at all that has happened. I am very pleased knowing that Barack Obama will continue to lead our beautiful country, and look forward to the incredible future ahead of us!” says her mother.

    Of course, she’s getting some hate on the YouTubes – which is to be expected. If you want to revisit the exact emotion the entire country was feeling a week before the election, check out the video that started it all:

  • Alabama & Mississippi Win the Most-Racist-on-Twitter Award Surrounding the Election

    Twitter, you can be so great and so disappointing at the same time. It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that social media is a haven for imbeciles. So much hateful garbage is spewed out in 140-character snippets that it’s easy to just gloss over it. It’s so common that it feels like it’s not even worth it to stop and shake your head.

    Bottom line: we know that people are still racist. This study wanted to know where people are the most racist.

    Geo-coded data analysts Floating Sheep looked at the prevalance of racist tweets post-election, as compared with all other tweets in specific areas. What they found was that Mississippi and Alabama had the highest LQ (location quotient) for racist tweets with scores of 7.4 and 8.1, respectively.

    By comparison, the highest quotient among the rest of the 48 states was 3.6. Among states that received a score, Arizona had the lowest with a 0.2.

    Here’s the map:

    racist tweet map

    And here’s the science behind the racist tweets map:

    [W]e collected all the geocoded tweets from the last week (beginning November 1) with racist terms that also reference the election in order to understand how these everyday acts of explicit racism are spatially distributed. Given the nature of these search terms, we’ve buried the details at the bottom of this post in a footnote [1].

    Given our interest in the geography of information we wanted to see how this type of hate speech overlaid on physical space. To do this we aggregated the 395 hate tweets to the state level and then normalized them by comparing them to the total number of geocoded tweets coming out of that state in the same time period [2]. We used a location quotient inspired measure (LQ) that indicates each state’s share of election hate speech tweet relative to its total number of tweets.[3] A score of 1.0 indicates that a state has relatively the same number of hate speech tweets as its total number of tweets. Scores above 1.0 indicate that hate speech is more prevalent than all tweets, suggesting that the state’s “twitterspace” contains more racists post-election tweets than the norm.

    So, the higher the quotient, the more racist the tweet stream from that state.

    Floating Sheep is careful to add the disclaimer that they are looking at tweets, not users – so a small group of users could be responsible for a higher volume of racist tweets.

    If you’re wondering about the types of tweets that might be included in this type of study, a quick twitter search of “Obama” + a racially charged term will net some whoppers. Black president or not, blatant racism is alive and well in the Twittersphere. Just ask these walking, talking stains:

    These tweets come from California and Texas, states that didn’t even register that high on the scale. Post-racist society, indeed.

  • Instagram Was Twice as Busy as Normal When Obama Won

    We know that Twitter had a huge election night. They announced over 31 million total election-related tweets, and a peak tweet-per-minute total of 327,452 (right as the networks began to call the race for President Obama).

    We also know that Facebook had a record-setting night, with 71.7 million U.S. election-related mentions and 88.7 global mentions on November 6th.

    But what about Instagram? Did users take to that network to share their photos of jubilation or despair? The short answer is yes, Instagram also had a pretty huge election evening as well.

    According to a blog post, the number of photos being uploaded to Instagram jumped 2.1x the normal rate the moment NBC predicted that Obama had been reelected.

    Throughout the whole day, Instagram reports more than 100,000 photos tagged with the #ivoted hashtag and over 150,000 tagged #election2012.

    “The intimacy and immediacy of the Instagram experience has fostered new and meaningful connections across the globe, whether it’s looking through the lens of a family member across town, or a favorite candidate barnstorming across the nation. We love watching people share photos in new and interesting ways, and we’re excited about the potential Instagram has to bring us all closer together,” says Instagram.

    Some Instagram users were getting a little too intimate with their voting choices during the day. Many users were snapping photos of their ballots, which we learned can be highly illegal in many states.

    What social media outlets did you rush to on election night? Was Instagram one of them?

  • Here’s What Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Thinks About Last Night’s Election

    Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg broke up the boys club back in June by becoming the first female member of Facebook’s Board of Directors. Before her induction, the Board was comprised of seven men including Mark Zuckerberg, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Sandberg’s appointment to the Board was very timely, considering Facebook was on the receiving end of a couple of campaigns from women’s groups who wanted them to diversify the all-male Board.

    In a Facebook post earlier today, Sandberg focused on the gains made by women during last night’s elections. By all accounts, female candidates had a good night picking up seats and making the new Congress the most female-heavy in history. New Hampshire, in fact, will send a women-only delegation to Washington as both Senators and both Representatives come from the fairer sex.

    In the post, Sandberg congratulated the winners and called it a “great step forward for women.” Here’s the full update:

    While much of the attention is focused on President Obama’s victory, it is worth noting that this election was a great step forward for women.

    The 113th Congress will have at least 19 female senators, the most ever in U.S. history! Congratulations to Senators Maria Cantwell, Dianne Feinstein, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Claire McCaskill, Debbie Stabenow on returning to the Senate and Deb Fischer for U.S. Senate, Tammy Baldwin, Mazie Hirono, and Elizabeth Warren on winning competitive races and joining the Senate (Heidi Heitkamp’s race in North Dakota is still too close to call but could mean a net gain of 5 seats for women). In the US House of Representatives, a record number of women were on the ballot last night and at least 16 women will join the incoming freshman class. And women made gains on the state and local level as well.

    Congratulations to all of them – and to the American public!

    Sandberg has never been shy about her progressive views. Earlier this year, she recorded a message for the GLAAD media awards that talked about Facebook’s commitment to being an ally for the LGBT community. At that ceremony, Facebook became the first social media company to receive a GLAAD award.

  • President Obama Won the Twitter Vote and it Wasn’t Even Close

    Post-election demographic analysis is always interesting, or always dull and pointless depending on who you ask. I’m sure you’ve seen people breakdown which candidate won the Latino vote, the youth vote, the Catholic vote, the Union vote, and so on and so forth.

    But another interesting vote that deserves a look is the Twitter vote. Which candidate had more Twitter shoutouts proclaiming that they were voted for?

    Obama. Big time.

    MIT has a new tool called “ivoted,” and it serves one purpose – to track mentions of “I voted for …” on the social network.

    According to the final tally, Obama garnered 66% of the Twitter user vote (49,608) compared to Romney’s 34% (24,255). Here’s the final map which shows the heaviest Twitter support for Obama in Vermont, and the most neutral state to be Arkansas.

    Twitter election MIT map

    Of course, there are plenty of tweets that could contain the phrase “I voted for Obama” or “I voted for Romney” and actually be anti-said candidate. For instance, “Anyone who says ‘I voted for Romney’ is an idiot.” That person probably didn’t vote for Romney. Glancing at the tweets, there seems to be a little of this going on on both sides.

    There’s also the problem of tweets that mention both Obama and Romney. In response that that, the ivoted mods had this to say:

    “Basic keyword screening is not perfect. And in that regard, we took a relatively conservative approach by dropping all tweets containing BOTH candidates’ names. So our observation is that people tend to include the name of the candidate they voted for.”

    There’s also hope that the tool will be even more valuable in future elections:

    “We are working to improve the algorithms for more interesting features after election. This is our first time to build a realtime reporting system,” says the creators.

    [h/t BuzzFeed]

  • President Obama Does Gangnam Style with a T-Rex in NMA’s Election Animation

    You knew it was coming. No major world event is ever really complete without a breakdown from our favorite Taiwanese animators.

    NMA has just released their take on the 2012 Presidential Election, and it lives up to their delightfully odd standard.

    If you only watch one post-election wrap-up this morning, please let it be this one. Divorced from political bias, Next Media Animation free themselves up to present last night’s election the way it should be presented – with boxing, Nate Silver beatdowns, trapdoors, battleaxes, dinosaurs, hadoukens, and Gangnam style. Check it out below:

  • The Obamas’ Hug Becomes Most-Liked Photo in Facebook History

    When it was becoming more clear that Barack Obama would be reelected and remain President of the United States, he tweeted and Facebooked the news to his millions of followers/fans. One photo update in particular resonated with people, and it has now become the most-liked photo in the history of the social network.

    You may have already seen the photo – that embrace between President Obama and First Lady Michelle. According to Facebook, it became the most-liked photo in history last night when it hit 2.1 million likes.

    As of the writing of this article, the photo has broken the 3 million like barrier and also boasts over 366,000 shares.

    Facebook + Journalists5 hours ago

    With more than 2.1 million likes, this Barack Obama photo is the most-liked Facebook photo of all time.

    Timeline Photos

    Powered by socialditto  710 likes ·  18 comments

    According to Facebook, the most popular terms on the site when Obama was declared the winner were “Obama wins,” “Romney,” “President,” “Four More Years,” and “Come on.” The President shared the hugging photo on multiple social networks with the phrase “Four More Years.”

    It’s not just Facebook where that photo made a big splash. The hugging photo has also been given the title of most-retweeted tweet in the history of Twitter.

  • Obama’s “Four More Years” Tweet Is the Most Popular Tweet in History

    Good morning, America. Last night you reelected the President. And although there will be no change in the White House for the next four years, there has been a shakeup inside the ranks of Twitter’s most popular tweets.

    Ladies and gentlemen, meet your new most popular tweet ever:

    As of 9 am ET on Wednesday, this tweet has over 626,000 retweets and over 212,000 favorites. But it only needed a few minutes to become the most retweeted tweet in Twitter history. Shortly after posting the tweet, Twitter’s @gov team informed the President that he had officially claimed another prize:

    In all, Twitter reports 31 million election-related tweets yesterday and a peak tweets-per-minute total of 327,452 – right as the networks began to call the race for President Obama.

  • Track Voting in Real Time With Facebook and Foursquare

    In many states across the country, we’ve already passed the halfway mark for voting hours in the 2012 Presidential Election. Soon, we will all know whether President Obama or Mitt Romney will lead the country for the next four years (or at least have a better idea of how things are going).

    If you want to look at some maps and watch votes as they roll in, as well as get some location-based and demographic stats in real time – both Facebook and Foursquare have you covered.

    Facebook made it a point to make sure its million of users voted today. For every user of voting age, the social network displayed a voting reminder at the top of their news feeds. This reminder let users find their polling place as well as confirm that they had voted. The results of this tally are now coming in live on Facebook’s voting map.

    As of the writing of this article, 2.7 million Facebook users have confirmed their vote. Females are leading by a nearly 2 to 1 margin. Young voters are also more active both on Facebook and in the voting both. 18-34 year olds make up 60% of the users who have confirmed their vote on the site. You can check it out here.

    “The map displays bursts of activity as people share that they’re voting. The size of each burst matches the number of people voting in that region right now,” says Facebook.

    You can interact with the map by clicking a specific state:

    Foursquare is also using check-ins to aggregate voter data. Their “I Voted” map show a state-by-state picture of the real-time check-ins happening at polling places. As of now, they’ve logged over 87,000 check-ins and are reporting a 50-50 gender breakdown. You can check it out here or access it below:

  • Guys, Stop Instagramming Your Ballots. Seriously.

    I know you’re excited about voting. It’s not only our democratic right and duty, but it’s a privilege. Quick tip: If you want to convince yourself of the importance of voting, just imagine for a second that you were unable to vote. Or prohibited. Still not convinced? What’s your reason for not voting? Whatever your excuse, I guarantee it sucks.

    But excited and proud as you are, you should probably refrain from posting pictures of your ballots on social media. Unless you want to open yourself up to some sticky legal situations. If that’s the case, feel free to proceed.

    Go to Instagram (or Webstagram, if you’re on a desktop) and hashtag search for #vote or #ballot. Chances are, you’ll see plenty of sepia-toned photos of people’s ballots. I’m sure you can find plenty of Facebook and Twitter as well.

    These people could be violating the law. Here’s what the Citizen Media Law Project has to say about it in a great blog post about Documenting your vote:

    If you want to take photographs or shoot video inside your polling place, you must be cautious to avoid violating the law. Election laws are serious business – you could be removed from the polling place and even subject to criminal penalties. Some states like Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Texas expressly prohibit the use of photographic and recording equipment inside polling places. In addition, a majority of states have laws prohibiting the disclosure of your own marked ballot, although the details of these laws vary significantly.

    Murky details. Varying statutes. State-by-state discrepancies. Sounds icky. The safest course of action is probably keeping your phone in your pocket until after you cast your vote. But if you really want to create photo evidence of you performing your civic duty, CMLP has a great chart that looks at photo/video recording laws as they apply to elections.

    They currently mark 29 states as outright prohibiting photos or filming of one’s own marked ballot. Another 9 states have “unclear” laws about it.

    Some laws directly tackle displaying marked ballots on the internet, while others paint a broad brush and outlaw exhibition of completed ballots to any other person. Take for instance Alaska’s statute:

    “[A] voter may not exhibit the voter’s ballot to an election official or any other person so as to enable any person to ascertain how the voter marked the ballot.”

    I’m pretty sure tweeting out an Instagrammed photo inside the booth would apply here.

    There are plenty of times to get out your iPhone and record what’s happening around you. If you see voter interference or intimidation outside a polling place – document it. But it’s probably best to leave your ballot out of your gleeful election day social media posts.

  • Celebrate Election Day with a Bad Lip Reading of the Debates

    Hopefully, by the end of the night (or early tomorrow morning), we’ll know who won the 2012 Presidential election. Even if something strange happens and we have to wait a little while for the official results, one thing is certain: the campaigning is over. The ads are done, the debates are done. America, it’s over.

    In celebration of that, Bad Lip Reading has just unveiled their awesome take on the 2012 debates – the first Presidential debate, the VP debate, the town hall debate, and the foreign policy debate.

    So, go vote and make your voice heard. And then sit back and watch Obama, Romney, Biden, and Ryan spew nonsense. I’m sure that plenty of you feel that that’s been going on for months already, but I’m pretty sure none of the candidates have mentioned Mufasa until now.

  • Halo 4 Release May Dampen Voter Turnout Among Gamers [POLL]

    Halo 4 Release May Dampen Voter Turnout Among Gamers [POLL]

    Voting: it’s your civic duty. It’s the foundation of any democracy, a way for everyone to make their voice heard. Millions have fought and died to give you the right, and the privilege to cast your ballot. Without strong turnout on election day, the very fabric of our free society could unravel and usher in generations of disenfranchised citizens. Your country needs you, and apparently that call is so easily ignored that a video game release could lock in your apathy.

    In a truly disheartening poll, over half of the people surveyed said that they were more likely to stand in a line to purchase Halo 4 than stand in a line to vote in this year’s Presidential election. Of course, both the Halo 4 release and the election are occurring on Tuesday, November 6th.

    The poll was conducted by IGN last week. They surveyed nearly 4,000 registered voters and found that 53% may choose Halo 4 of voting.

    Furthermore, 24% said that they are “seriously considering” not voting in order to play Halo 4.

    The poll looked at a couple of key swing states and found that 35% of registered voters in Florida are seriously considering Halo 4 over voting. 28% of registered voters in Ohio are considering doing to same.

    For shame, America. For shame. Here’s a compromise: Go vote, and you can write in Master Chief for one of your local senate races.

  • On Election Night, Gloat to Your Political Frenemies with These GIFs

    On election night, the chances are pretty high that your Facebook and Twitter streams will be inundated with policial posts. Some of your friends will rejoice, others will be apoplectic. Thus is the nature of bitter political contests. Many users will simply stay off social media in an effort to avoid the political bickering – but if you want to throw yourself into the fray, you’ll need a few GIFs as ammunition.

    If your candidate is victorious (and assuming we have a victor on election night), you may want to antagonize your friends by rubbing it in – just a little bit. If you have a little troll inside of you waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike, let me offer eight GIFS to link to when responding to a politically-charged status update or tweet.

    First, if President Obama is reelected:

    (image)

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    (via)

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    (via)

    And if Mitt Romney wins:

    (image)

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    (via)

  • Find Your Voting Location on Google, Facebook

    Tomorrow, November 6th, is election day in the U.S. If you haven’t already voted and need to know where you should vote tomorrow, both Google and Facebook have tools to make it incredibly easy.

    Google has provided a quick answer application built into certain polling-related search queries. If you search “voting location,” “where to vote” or other similar phrases, Google displays a voter information search box above the results.

    All you have to do is enter your address, and Google will show you your voting location.

    They will actually take you to their new Voter Information Tool, which they unveiled about a week ago. The tool displays voting locations, times, directions, as well as ballot summaries dependent on area.

    Facebook has partnered with Microsoft and the Voting Information Project to provide their own inline tool to let users find their voting location. It’s called the Polling Place Locator, and it is available via the U.S. Politics on Facebook page.

    Just type in your address, and let Bing maps tell you where to cast your ballot.

    Google and Facebook are two of the most-visited sites on the internet, so these simple voter information tools have a real chance to help people find out where to perform their civic duty. And as always – the stronger the voter turnout, the stronger the democracy. Just vote, people.

  • YouTube Calling on Citizen Journalists to Document Their Vote

    During the 2012 campaign season, Youtube has been involved in providing people access to the videos that they need to be better-informed voters. They streamed both political conventions in their entirety, as well as all four Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. Along with the live streams, their Elections Hub has has also provided election reporting from ABC News, Al Jazeera, Univision, the New York Times, and many more.

    Now, they want to turn it over to you.

    Today, YouTube has (once again) asked the electorate to participate in documenting the 2012 election. Here’s what they had to say in a blog post:

    “We want to see and hear from you tomorrow. Whether you’re vlogging about which candidate you support, capturing footage of the long line at your polling place, or encouraging your friends to get out of the house and go vote, we’re inviting you to send us your Election Day videos.”

    Basically, YouTube wants your citizen journalism on election day. After you make your video documenting some aspect of the vote, you can tweet it at @YouTubePolitics and/or upload it with the #YouTubePolitics hashtag. YouTube says that some of the videos will be featured on the Elections Hub.

    Of course, before you pull out your smartphone or drag a camera into a polling place, check on the laws in your area surrounding voting locations and filming.

    The election is tomorrow. Make sure you vote. And if you can, why not document your experience as well?

  • The Electorate Isn’t Completely Uninformed, and We Can Give Some Credit to Facebook

    The pessimist inside every participating member of a democracy thinks that the electorate is full of completely uniformed voters who will pick candidates based on their tie color, much like a disinterested sports follower will pick March Madness teams based on their mascots. While there is plenty of evidence to suggest that they may be correct, a new study from Pew shows that at least a significant chunk of the electorate is at least attempting to inform themselves through online videos.

    Of course, breaking from the ranks of the uninformed doesn’t imply that you’ll break from the ranks of the misinformed, but that’s a whole other argument.

    Voters in 2012 have a distinct advantage over voters of the past. The internet and the rise of online video has given them a wellspring of information. Sorting through all of it to find the good and weed out the bad is one thing – but at least it’s all there for the taking. Pew’s study finds that a significant portion of registered voters are viewing and sharing online political videos this election season.

    55% of all registered voters and 66% of internet-savvy registered voters say they’ve taken to the interwebs to watch online political videos this season. Here’s a more specific breakdown:

    • 48% of internet-using registered voters watch video news reports online about the election or politics
    • 40% watch previously recorded videos online of candidate speeches, press conferences, or debates
    • 39% watch informational videos online that explain a political issue
    • 37% watch humorous or parody videos online dealing with political issues
    • 36% watch political advertisements online
    • 28% watch live videos online of candidate speeches, press conferences, or debates

    And Pew says that 40% of internet-using voters have accessed said political videos via social media recommendation.

    Is there a party line discrepancy? Not really, says Pew:

    “There are very few partisan differences when it comes to watching political videos, or to having them recommended by other people. Democratic and Republican voters are equally likely to have watched political videos online this election season, to have recommended online political videos to other people, and to have received such recommendations from others. However, registered voters who identify as liberal are more likely to have had political videos recommended to them on a social networking site this election season than moderate or conservative voters.”

    Information is out there, if you’re willing to find it. In future elections, the availability of streaming and static video will only increase. While we can’t know the exact content of the videos this sample of the electorate accessed, we do know that over half were engaged enough to seek it out.

  • Google Breaks Out the Political Scorecards in Time for Election Day

    Guys, it’s almost over. The 2012 Presidential race has made the final turn and has entered the homestretch. Like any good horse race, this is the most exciting time – especially if you’re living in one of the highly-contested swing states.

    Did I say exciting? I meant unbearable, excruciating, exhausting, and miserable. If you’re in Ohio, Virginia, Florida, or a handful of other states – chances are you’re up to your eyeballs in campaign ads. Now, thanks to Google, we can see just exactly how much each candidate is spending in these key swing states, as well as get some insight into how the candidates are being searched across the network.

    The Google Politics & Elections team has just published this infographic on spending, searches, and new results in eight key swing states. What we see is a big spending gap between President Obama and Mitt Romney, with the former taking a pretty big lead. We also so that in most areas, President Obama has garnered more search interest. Check it out:

    Swing State Spending and search interest from Google

    Google has also put out a scorecard of some Google-related stats including Google+ followers, YouTube views and subscribers, and search interest (nationwide):

  • Foursquare Unveils New Voting App for Election Day

    Today, Foursquare unveiled the new “I Voted” app. Powered by the Google Civic Information API, the app will give you everything you need to know to make you a good citizen and informed voter.

    Well, maybe not a truly informed voter – Foursquare isn’t run by magicians. But it will give you some basic info on where to be, what you’ll need, and what your choices are on November 6th.

    “Connect the ‘I Voted’ app to your Foursquare account today. You’ll be able to find your polling station and learn about the candidates and propositions that will be on your ballot ahead of time,” says Foursquare. It will also provide you with voter ID requirements in whatever state you’re voting in.

    Foursquare says that the voting initiative is a combined effort with Engage, the Voting Information Project, Pew, and the New Organizing Institute.

    If information wasn’t enough of an incentive to connect the “I Voted” app, they’re also offering a special election day badge for anyone who includes the #ivoted hashtag inside their check-in and the polling location.

    One of the more interesting parts about the announcement is the unveiling of election.foursquare.com. As of now, it’s just a gateway to the “I Voted” app. But the company tells users to check back on election day to “see America voting in real time.” There’s also a map on the page, so I’m assuming we’re going to get to see voters checking in at their polling places all across the country. Pretty cool.

    A few days ago, Google launched their own voter information tool.