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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty - North America

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Early voting questions and concerns among searchers

October 29, 2008

Early voting has been underway in many states and Internet users are turning to search to help them find out about the process. The term ‘early voting’ was ranked fourth among the Fast Moving Search Terms for the Politics category for the 4 weeks ending 10/25/2008 as compared to previous 4 week period. Another common question among searches to the Political category is ‘where to vote’ and ‘where do I vote’ as voters make their plans for both early voting and the long (& for many anxiously) awaited Election Day next Tuesday.

Last week, ‘early voting’ searches spiked to 7.0x the volume of the previous week, with the most common searches involving the locations to place ballots before Tuesday. Among the top 100 search term variations for ‘early voting’, 21% included a location such as a state, city, or county. The state, cities and counties of Texas represented the highest share of location based searches with 8.2%, followed by those in Georgia and Illinois, each with 1.9%. Generic searches followed with 7% and informational searches represented 3% of the volume among the top 100. The informational searches highlight voter fraud concerns among voters with phrases appearing like ‘votes being changed in early voting’.

early voting searches.png

As the clock to the Election winds down, the need for correct information about the voting process remains an important one. There are lots of opportunities for websites to help lead voters down the right path and engender loyalty & goodwill while doing so.

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 12:44 PM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Election2008 | Fast Moving Search Terms