Online queries for information about former President Donald Trump have surged during the last few weeks of the campaign cycle and outpace searches about Vice President Kamala Harris -- including in seven swing states.
A similar gap in searches favoring the Republican candidate was recorded during the 2016 and 2020 elections against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden respectively, and did not point to the same outcome. But in an election that is shaping up as extremely close, any influence could matter.
Search about the former president regularly outpaced that of Harris on Google until President Joe Biden announced his resignation in late July and the vice president quickly claimed the party nomination. Queries about Harris then peaked during the last 10 days of July, petering out in August as searches for Trump picked up again. Queries about the Republican nominee have grown in relation to Harris consistently since then.
Over the last week, national searches for the former president averaged 63 on a weighted scale of 100 while Harris averaged just 31. Americans searching on Google in the swing states - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin - have been following the same trends.
Representatives for the Harris and Trump campaigns did not respond to requests for comment by Newsweek.
Established candidates do not necessarily benefit from the old adage that 'any publicity is good publicity', according to Eric Shiraev, the director of George Mason University's Character Assassination and Reputation Politics Research Lab (CARP).
"Good publicity is good for unknown candidates and, usually, even bad publicity [helps] when people start talking about this individual. Good or bad, it doesn't really matter," Shiraev told Newsweek.
His research has shown that "historically, for leading candidates, the biggest challenge was not to make a mistake."
Instead, the data is indicative of what Americans are already thinking.
"The tendency in trends definitely relates to the desire of so many voters to go and basically find something that they like to find - like a sports fan," Shiraev said. "They simply want to be assured," he added, which "may affect the magic fraction of a percent who are likely to go and vote rather than just sitting at home and just doing nothing."
Mentions of "Harris" and "Trump" have been growing on social media too, according to data compiled by the search analyzer Brand24. Like in Google search trends, mentions and views of posts about the candidates' have soared in recent days with a noticeable gap between talk of the Republican nominee over the Democratic pick.
There was a vast difference in whether the terms were mentioned in positive or negative contexts in social media, according to the data. Negative comments exceeded positive posts by far, and references to Trump dominated both categories. The former president was brought up about three times more than the vice president over the last week across both positive and negative posts. The Google search data could not be analyzed for context in the same way.
The higher overall search for the Republican candidate in this election and the previous two elections could be the result of people seeking to indulge in their doubts about an opposing candidate and not a sign of increased support. "enjoy the misery of others," according to Shiraev.
"It's a desire to enjoy the misery of others," Shiraev said. He hypothesized that the unequal search interest over the last few weeks could be the result of people's inclination " to laugh at the expense of others... about what the guy said, and enjoying it. It's simple self-validation"
He added that some voters may also be using the web to indulge in the guilty pleasure - either learning more about a candidate they secretly love or angrily scrolling about the nominee they detest. Unlike many family homes, "Google search is private," the professor said.
"It doesn't make a difference," Shiraev concluded about the search trends. "There's no reason to panic, and there's no reason to gloat."
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