It's become an article of faith that the Dems, much more than the Republicans, occupy the national interest. Bored at work, I decided to test this theory. Despite my expectations, I was surprised at what I found.
well, the first thing we can say is, interest in Obama absolutely dwarfs interest in McCain:
This is searches and news stories for each candidate over the last month. Blue is BHO (duh). The upper graph is searches, lower is news items.
-- more after the jump --
The first thing to point out is that these graphs start at zero. There are times over the last month where Obama has been getting five to ten times the attention McCain has. We all knew it, but it's a bit shocking to see the difference.
What's equally fascinating is where the attention is coming from. This next graph covers searches since June 1:
Uhhh, yeah...D.C. generated more Obama traffic than any state in the Union. Again, the stark contrast between the blue and red lines is glaring. I leave it to the astute reader to determine why the nation's capital is doing an unprecedented amount of Obama googling.
Of course, all this traffic begs the question...what the hell are they so interested in? Google Suggest to the rescue! Here are common Obama searches, and how many hits they get:
Poof! That's the sound of my google-oppo research conspiracy theories popping. While it's hard to tell how often a keyword is used, the most common result is "Obama news". Maybe people are just using the web to keep up with news on our candidate. It's still odd that they are so DISinterested in McCain.
A pleasant surprise, the entire list is amazingly benign. Do you see "obama wright"? We DO see "obama muslim", but that's a fairly small proportion of hits. Perhaps the muslim meme, after all, is the one we need to guard against.
In fact, while we're at it,what does come up when you do that search?:
Hmm. 2 smears, 5 rebuttals. Could be worse. At least the debunks occupy the coveted #1 and #2 spots.
Moving on to McCain, we see the continued theme of "we're just not that into you":
The best draw on this list is arguably about both McCains, not just the candidate. Cindy McCain gets nearly as many hits has John does. What HUGELY funny is that Hagee is such a significant fraction of McCain hits. I guess it stuck more than a bit.
One worrisome trend: "mccain for president" is pretty damn specific. Quite a few someones are talking about his website. Le sigh.
So, there it is. For better or worse, internet-savvy people are paying attention to Obama almost to the exclusion of his rival. They're not, by and large, searching for crackpot stuff (sorry NQ).
And, surprisingly enough, the Beltway boys are using Google to keep up. Everyone wave to our lawmakers!