My brother and I have been arguing about politics and I say that the Clinton is viewed more suspiciously than Trump. He says otherwise. I’m wondering, can I use Google to find out who is more distrusted?
Many families have a “no politics” rule, particularly during family meals, just to avoid fights and awkwardness, but I like that you are interested in overall public opinion as a data point for your discussion with your brother. Argument, perhaps? 🙂
In any case, there’s lots of data out there, lots of poll information and analysis both positive and negative for every candidate, even those that have been out of the race for months now. But Google itself offers an interesting way to glean public sentiment through its “suggestions”. What are they? The possible search completion words as you type in the beginning of a search.
Let’s have a look by starting with President Obama:
As you can see, there’s positive sentiment – “Barack Obama is a good leader” – and there’s negative sentiment “is osama bin laden”.
So that’s the idea, now let’s look at Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump!
First, Clinton:
Oh, that’s not looking so positive. But how about The Donald?
Well, sure looks like Trump is winning the Google search war, doesn’t it?
What about the other candidates? Let’s start with Bernie Sanders:
“Awesome” isn’t too bad, but that nutty story about him being the Zodiac Killer still lingers. He’s out of the race, though, so maybe that’s what the last option, “bernie sanders is out”, refers to?
For completeness, how about Jeb Bush? Do Google searchers like him?
Oh, not so much. Perhaps that’s part of the reason he dropped out of the Republican Presidential Candidate race early?
Governor Chris Christie? Better?
Ah, not really. Not much love lost, particularly when a Republican candidate has more people searching to find out if he’s a democrat or not!
And, finally, for completeness sake, how about early Republican candidate and former HP head Carly Fiorina?
Not such bad results, actually. Maybe she shouldn’t have dropped out so quickly.
In any case, that’s how you can get some interesting data from Google Suggest about the major candidates, adding some fuel to your argument with your brother. Good luck winning that one, though.
I teach a library orientation class to community college courses. It is a 60-90 minute presentation of the basics of research (finding books, articles, websites and how to evaluate them). For nine years I have ended with this example (that I stole from a now-retired instruction librarian):
Go to Google, type in Martin Luther King, what websites come up in the top 5-10? Do you notice anything that strikes you as unusual?
(hint: look at martinlutherking.org)
Don’t trust everything you hear. Be skeptical of everyone, including me. Look at different opinions and make up your own mind. Develop your BS detector, it will serve you well.