The next Presidential election could be eased into office not just by Television ads, speeches or debates, but by Google’s secret decisions, and few experts and researchers would know how this was accomplished.
We all know that technology is playing a major role in our lives this days and it can help us decide the actions we must take like choosing the next leader.
Not every voter in the Philippines uses Google, or even the Internet for that matter. But enough of the population does use Google that its search patterns cannot be ignored by either candidate, the media, or anyone interested in the outcome of the election. Fortunately, Google lets anyone see the relative popularity of different search terms on Google Trends.
For example, if more people are searching on Google for “Duterte” than “Roxas”, “Poe” or “Binay” does that mean he is more likely to win the election?
Let’s take a look at the 2010 Presidential election final result. PNoy got 15m votes, Erap with 9m, Villar with 5m and Gibo Teodoro got 4 million votes.
Now, let’s take a look at the Google trends or the people’s activities when using the internet to research for this candidates last 2010 election.
Queries for the last 2010 Presidential election (June 2009 - May 2010)
View full report in Google Trends
President Aquino is on top with 100 search score, Villar is on the 2nd spot with 90 search score, Gibo with 55 and Erap on 4th with only 35, but he managed to be on the second spot in the 2010 final election result because he is popular with the lower class voting population that rarely use the internet that time. But still, the popularity of President Aquino gave him almost 5 million votes lead to Erap.
Now, here’s the current result of the trend for the current Presidential candidates from June 2015 - December 2015.
Queries months before 2016 election (June 2015 - December 2015)
View full report in Google Trends
Look at the spikes of the popular Mayor from Davao, it is phenomenal and if it will continue until before the election, there’s a good chance that Duterte will be the next President.
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