Google searches Spike for Harris, Trump’s policies on the eve of Election Day

Google searches for Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump’s policies have spiked as voters head to the polls on Election Day.

Spikes on Google Trends popped up for phrases like “Kamala Harris policies” and “Donald Trump interview” just hours before voters make their final choice about who to cast their ballot for in the White House.

States such as Utah and Georgia saw particularly high increases in searches involving Harris’ positions on education and immigration. Third-party candidates such as Chase Oliver, who is running for the Libertarian Party, and Cornel West also saw significant increases in search interest.

The increases in interest started around November 1st and have steadily increased in the latter stages of the campaign.

North Carolina and Georgia are both critical swing states, and polls show both extremely close between the two candidates. These two states were among the highest in Internet traffic related to Trump and Harris’ political views.

Interest in both Harris and Trump was the same, with both candidates receiving one large number of searches on Google after November 3.

The swing states that polled the most for Trump were Arizona and North Carolina, while the swing states that polled the most for Harris were Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada.

With the election predicted to be extremely close, undecided voters on Election Day could be the difference between a Harris or Trump victory.

While the search terms indicate that some voters are still undecided about who they will vote for, millions of Americans have already made that choice. More than 70 million voters cast their ballots early, either in person or by using a mail-in ballot.

Figures compiled by the University of Florida Election Lab’s early voter tracking show that 42,664,880 people voted early in person, while 35,376,421 mail ballots were returned on Monday, November 4.

However, this number is almost half of the total 158.4 million votes cast in the 2020 election, where millions of voters used alternative methods due to the COVID pandemic.

Early voting was particularly high in the swing states that saw the highest increases in these search terms, with over half of Georgia already casting their ballots.

Similarly, more than 4.4 million North Carolinians have already voted ahead of Election Day, meaning the Google trends may not be indicative of undecided voters in those states.

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