Yesterday, the Yahoo Search blog asked, "Can Search Usage Predict Election Outcomes?"
The answer is no. I covered this in a Search Insider column in November 2006, "The Unpredictable Election":
If you were able to, in any rough sense, predict the results of the U.S. elections last week for either chamber of our bicameral legislature (and, yes, I've been waiting years to use "bicameral" in a column), then you can feel pretty good about yourself. It means you have a leg up on the search engines.
I should slow down, as that's not entirely accurate. The search engines themselves weren't predicting anything about the elections (though it would be fun to see them try). What some of my colleagues and I tried examining, however, was whether consumer search behavior was a better predictor of election results than polls. It wasn't.
I will agree with Yahoo's take on the value of search usage:
That may be a bit of a stretch, but there's no doubt that online search behavior can be an insightful window in the minds of consumers and voters.
For that reason, among others, have fun with the Yahoo Political Dashboard, where Yahoo Buzz, based on search behavior, is one of the factors considered for candidate success.
