The 2016 Presidential Campaign According To Google: What Ron Paul Can Teach Us About Donald Trump & Bernie Sanders
A new Google Chrome add-on helps to delete mentions of Donald Trump from your web browsing experience. Sick of the Republican presidential candidate? Then the Trump Filter might be for you. Calling itself the “antidote” for Trump’s “toxic candidacy,” the app was developed by Rob Spectre.
“I hope folks will take this opportunity to learn more about the wide field of candidates out there,” Spectre told CNNMoney. “People are looking to turn him off.”
The extension has three modes: mild filtration, aggressive and vindictive. On just the lowest setting, Trump’s Twitter is blocked, while on vindictive, CNN, Google News and others disappear.
It’s no secret why someone might think a Trump Filter is necessary. After all, in the Presidential Race, according to Google Trends, Trump is a leading candidate in terms of Google search interest. As you can see in the below image, starting over the summer, Trump’s visibility online increased massively. Only in January has Sanders caught up to Trump.
In December, he’s mostly controlled a commanding margin over other candidates. For a short time, Bernie Sanders did surpass trump, something Hillary Clinton has not done since the spring.
But, going back in time on Google Trends, gives one reason to believe that, despite the current Google Trends data, Trump still might not win. After all, in December 2007, less than a year before the election in November 2008 — and the same time before that election as we currently are ahead of 2016’s — Ron Paul enjoyed a commanding lead. Barack Obama, slightly less popular than Hillary Clinton at the time, would go on to make history.
By January 2008, everything had changed:
Paul had lost his commanding lead.
What explains Trump’s wild success in the media? This is not an easy answer in context of the chart which includes the presidential candidates, including the most Searched person, Ron Paul. The majority of Americans believe that the media has at least a fair amount of influence over presidential elections.
Does media bias affect voting? Over 70 percent of Americans believe that there is either a great deal or a fair amount of media bias in news coverage. Evidence of bias ranges from the topic choices of the New York Times to the choice of think tanks to which the media refer in their broadcasts.
For instance, researchers for the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Fox News had a “statistically significant effect” on the vote share in towns where it was introduced between 1996–2000. Republicans gained between a small percentage points in towns that had Fox News.
While the constant media coverage of Donald Trump could explain his popularity according to Google, the same explanation is unsatisfactory for Ron Paul, who received little media coverage during that election cycle compared to other candidates. If Paul supporters simply had a knack for new media, and word of mouth, then that could bring in another element to explain the Google data.
