Super Tuesday, today, is the day which may be the defining point for who becomes the next President of the United States of America (that is, the Democratic nominee). Instead of a handful of candidates bidding for the position, only two remain : Hillary Clinton & Barack Obama.
About a year ago I looked at the popularity of three candidates for this seat; Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards and attempted to gauge their popularity based upon search trends and search results. At the time, Obama was just filing for the Presidency and becoming a front runner.
At the time, a search for Barack Obama on Google resulted in his United States Senator profile page being listed at #1. Today, things have changed as not only is his campaign homepage ranked at #1, but the results for his name also include results for Google Book Search and Google News results. Obama’s Senatorial page is now ranked at #3, following a Wikipedia entry and an anti-Barack message is ranked at #4.
Funny that Google is pushing Obama’s books the day of the major Democratic primaries, but interest in the candidate and his views could be drawing intrigue into his published works.
On the other side of the ballot, let’s look at the top Google results for Hillary Clinton.
Like Obama, Clinton’s campaign page is ranked #1, followed by Wikipedia entries, her Senatorial page, then a Whitehouse.gov page listing her as a first lady. Interestingly enough an anti-Clinton and pro-Obama video is listed in the Google Universal results for Hillary, in the #5 position.
Interestingly enough, the anti-Hillary Apple 1984 video message in the Google Universal Search listing does not include a plusbox expandable video window like the Hillary Clinton speech at Google video does, even though the video is hosted on YouTube. Notice however that the video is rated higher by YouTube users, and has 4,455,291 views which is substantially more than the 77,104 views the Women @ Google Hillary Clinton video received; two reasons it ranks higher.
Google Trends
A look into Google Trends shows that there has been a peak in search interest for the candidates over the past 30 days, with more users searching or information on Obama than Clinton. This could be a result of the amount of Internet news surrounding the candidates, since if you look at the news reference volume the Obama news outweighs the Clinton news (however they seem to be in a dead heat right now).
A search for only their last names on Google Trends proves even more interesting, as their is a large gap between “Obama” and “Clinton” searches. One reason I’m surprised by this is because of the role Bill Clinton has played in the campaign. Although the Clinton’s are offering a “two for one” package, there seems to be more search interest in Obama.
Alexa
A look into Alexa shows that page views and Alexa ranking for BarackObama.com and HillaryClinton show a massive difference in site popularity between the two camps with more interest and traffic leaning substantially to the Obama camp.
Conclusion
There seems to be an overwhelming amount of interest in Barack Obama according to Google Trends and Alexa reporting. Also, after judging the Google results, the Obama camp’s results are a bit better than the Clinton camp’s, that negative Clinton video being the difference.
Can we predict Obama takes Super Tuesday because of Google results and Alexa Rankings? Of course not, those decisions will be made at the local voting level in each state, county and district … and finally tallied by Democratic Party delegates. But Obama takes the cake in Google Rankings, Trends, and Alexa. Later, we’ll be looking at the Romney & McCain numbers.
