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The 2012 Presidential Election, As Told By Google Autocomplete

With Newt Gingrich dropping out of the GOP primary race today, the inevitable has happened. Mitt Romney will be your Republican candidate for President in 2012. The Romney/Obama battle has already beg...
The 2012 Presidential Election, As Told By Google Autocomplete
Written by Josh Wolford
  • With Newt Gingrich dropping out of the GOP primary race today, the inevitable has happened. Mitt Romney will be your Republican candidate for President in 2012. The Romney/Obama battle has already begun with hard hard-hitting attacks about each candidate’s dealings with dogs – so you know we’re in for a treat.

    Earlier this week we told you that Google was once again in hot water over its autocomplete feature. A French anti-discrimination group sued the company for search suggestions that labeled many prominent public figures as “Jew” or “Jewish.”

    With that on my mind, I thought we should take some time, about six months out, to look at the race through the eyes of Google autocomplete. You know the feature – it’s when you start typing your query and Google attempts to finish it for you. Since Google’s predictive search feature is based on an algorithm that factors in popular searches from other users as well as the content of all the pages it indexes, you can almost say that Google autocomplete is a rudimentary pulse of the collective internet.

    With the exception of very specific circumstances like hate speech and violence, Google does not manually interfere with its autocomplete suggestions. So most of what you’re about to see is based on the searches of real people.

    Having said that, let’s tell the story of the upcoming 2012 election from the strange eyes of Google search.

    First, the collective feelings on Newt Gingrich

    Newt Gingrich should

    Now, on to our GOP challenger Mitt Romney

    What about the incumbent, President Obama?

    Obama is

    Forget the actual candidates, what about Google searchers’ queries about the two parties?

    First, the Republicans

    Republicans are

    Now to the Democrats

    Democrats are

    Not a lot of choice there. What about a search for “This election is…”

    This election is

    Maybe that last one has something to do with this next query about our government…

    our government is

    I guess there’s only one logical conclusion…

    America is

    What a bunch of optimists! I guess it was fun while it lasted, guys.

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