Google Trends Predicts Hillary as Dem Nominee

Anne Zelenka | Wednesday, December 5, 2007 | 7:37 AM PT | 26 comments

Google’s Marissa Mayer, VP of search products & user experience, proposed Google Trends as a way of polling the populace, suggesting in a webcast yesterday that Trends could help predict who will win an election.

Mayer showed how Google Trends accurately predicted George W. Bush’s dominance over John Kerry in 2004 and Nicolas Sarkozy’s win in May of this year over Segolene Royal in the French presidential election. Current Google trend lines show Clinton beating Obama and Edwards, though I wonder how anti-Hillary sentiment plays into this, given it seems stronger than any anti-Barack or anti-fancy haircuts feeling.

Clinton v. Obama v. Edwards in Google Trends

On the webcast, Mayer also said that Google will eventually provide an API for Trends and allow download of the data, but didn’t commit to a time frame for either of those.

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