George W. Bush and Al Gore are nearly tied in Internet search popularity as we head into the fall campaign season.
We've taken the 5 leading candidates -- from the Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Reform and Green parties -- and put them in order of search popularity for the week ending August 12. As a special bonus, we've compared each to a famous person and a fictional character who got nearly the same number of searches. The results?
GEORGE W. BUSH (Rep)
Oprah Winfrey
Winnie the Pooh
AL GORE (Dem)
Denise Richards
Hello Kitty
RALPH NADER (Grn)
Colleen Haskell
Mickey Mouse
PAT BUCHANAN (Ref)
Mata Hari
Ren & Stimpy
HARRY BROWNE (Lib)
Bob Barker
Porky Pig
Looks like "wait 'til next quadrennium" again for the Libertarians.
If you ignore the other candidates and compare Al Gore and George W. Bush searches head-to-head you get an extremely close race: 49.73% for Gore to 50.27% for Bush. That's a difference of barely one-half of one percent. Looks like we're in for a close race this fall.
Now, on to a more complete look at who's winning search "votes" with Internet users. Below are the 22 most-searched figures related to the current presidential race. (Sometimes loosely related, it's true.) The percentages show how much of the total search vote each person received last week.
Note that because Joseph Lieberman was nominated for the Democratic vice-presidential slot last Monday, he and his wife Hadassah have unusually high percentages of the vote. Still, the overall comparisons are quite fascinating.
The numbers:
30.2% Joseph Lieberman
17.1% George W. Bush
16.9% Al Gore
6.8% Ralph Nader
5.3% Bill Clinton
4.0% Richard Cheney
3.7% George P. Bush
3.5% Hillary Clinton
2.3% Mary Cheney
2.1% Hadassah Lieberman
1.6% Pat Buchanan
1.4% Chelsea Clinton
0.8% Laura Bush
0.8% Tipper Gore
0.7% John McCain
0.6% Jeb Bush
0.5% Karenna Gore
0.5% Al Gore, Sr.
0.4% George Bush, Sr.
0.3% Bay Buchanan
0.3% Jenna Bush
0.2% Harry Browne
A few notes on the players: George P. Bush is George W's hunky nephew; Mary Cheney is Dick Cheney's openly gay daughter; Laura Bush is George W's wife; Jeb Bush is George W's brother and governor of Florida; Karenna Gore is Al's daughter and campaign advisor; Bay Buchanan is Pat Buchanan's sister and campaign manager.
Jenna Bush is an odd case. She's one of George W's twin daughters; the girls graduated from high school this spring. While we saw dozens of searches for Jenna, we didn't see many for her sister Barbara -- doubly odd, since Barbara shares a name with her grandmother, the wife of the former prez.
So how come everyone's searching for Jenna and not Barbara? We're stumped. Jenna sounds like a bit more of a party girl -- at least, she's going to University of Texas while her sister goes to Yale. Could that be it?
George P. Bush got about the same number of searches last week as Prince William -- all from 14-year-old girls, no doubt. Those two boys are the political heartthrobs of the future.
Finally: check the surprising power of Ralph Nader. Last week he got about 40% as many searches as George W. or Al Gore. It looks like he'll be a much bigger player in this fall's elections than anyone thought.
Remember, you read it here first.
