Fact Check: Google Falsely Called for Harris Bias on Election Night

Conservatives and commentators on social media began sharing allegations on election night that Google had projected a pro-Kamala Harris bias, purportedly mapping results where voters could cast their vote for her but not Trump.

Images were also shared by the search engine’s website, apparently emblazoned with a massive photo of Harris, as Vice President and former President Donald Trump held out overnight results.

However, the truth behind these claims was directly disputed by Google after the likes of SpaceX founder and Trump ally Elon Musk began sharing them on X, formerly Twitter.

The claim

A post on X by user Doge Designer on November 5, 2024, viewed 45.6 million times, said “BREAKING: Google shows a ‘Where to Vote’ section with a map for Kamala Harris, but not for Donald Trump.

“Google is the largest corporate donor to the Democratic Party.”

The post included a video of someone searching for “Where can I vote for Harris” and returned a short result. No map result was shown when the same search query was made for Donald Trump.

Elon Musk responded to the post: “Does anyone else see this too?” His answer was viewed 42.8 million times.

Another post by a Tusli Gabbard parody account showed what appeared to be the Google home page covered with a picture of Kamala Harris.

“Do you think Google is meddling in the election in favor of Kamala Harris?” the user wrote.

“YES or NO?”

Facts

While the Google map result did happen, there is no evidence that Google intentionally engineered results to show where to vote for Harris. The company has said the result was due to a similar place name. There is also no evidence that the search engine projected a large image of Harris on its search page.

In an answer post on X sent by Google’s communications team, the map result had been triggered because of its similarity to a county in Texas, and that similar results were produced when searching for where to vote for Trump’s running mate, JD Vance.

“The ‘where to vote’ panel triggers some specific searches as Harris is also the name of a county in TX,” the post said.

“Also happens for “Vance” because it is also the name of a county. Fix coming. Note that very few people actually search for polling places this way.”

The same account later sent a message that the issue had been resolved.

As for the home page image, apart from changing the Doodle image that celebrates notable figures and important dates, Google’s home page has not changed its distinctive white background since 1988, when this recently compiled gallery of websites shows.

The image of the homepage with Harris appears to be created by AI, with clear signs of AI text generation next to the image itself and in the search bar.

The decision

False.

There is no evidence that Google’s search results were biased. Google, which says it fixed the search results, said it was caused by the engine returning results for place names and noted that a similar result occurred when searching for JD Vance.

The image of Harris on the website appears to be AI-generated.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team