Last October we told you that George W. Bush was as popular as Homer Simpson. In August we noted that Al Gore was as hot as Hello Kitty.
Now it's time to predict, based on your searches, who will win Tuesday's presidential elections.
Our prognosticatory record is not bad. In March Lycos users picked four out of five Oscar winners with their searches. (Not so easy -- don't tell us you thought Hilary Swank was a shoo-in for Best Actress.)
So what are Lycos users saying about Election 2000? First off, we can throw out Pat Buchanan. He gets barely as many searches as Lionel Richie, after all.
And we can definitely throw in Ralph Nader. The Green Party candidate is #40 on last week's Lycos 50, right behind Howard Stern. In a three-way race with Bush and Gore he got nearly 11% of the searches. That suggests to us that he'll be a serious factor in this race.
Now for head-to-head numbers. For the past ten weeks we've tracked Bush vs. Gore searches, and in eight of those weeks Gore has won. Bush led only twice, and one of those times was the week he said naughty things about a reporter.
We compared the candidates eight other times dating back to October of 1999; Bush won five of those contests, Gore three. Overall that makes the count Gore 11, Bush 7. (We don't yet have Web search results after Bush's drunk driving coverup was revealed last week.)
Running mates and wives are a wash: last week Joe Lieberman led Dick Cheney by 54% to 46%, a lead he has generally held since August. But Laura Bush led Tipper Gore last week by a huge 62% to 38% margin.
Each campaign has a resident young hottie to draw the hubba-hubba vote: the Bushes have Latin hunk George P. Bush, and the Gores have the blond-maned Karenna Gore Schiff. They seem to be about even over the past few months.
In March we noted that 72% of all Web searches were for GOP candidates as opposed to Democrats, a huge edge. In fact throughout the primaries we saw heavy interest in GOP runners-up John McCain and Alan Keyes; on March 3 McCain had a whopping 37% of all searches in a seven-candidate field.
Last week searches for the Republican Party led searches for the Democratic Party by a 52% to 48% edge. Another key point: one month ago Nader's Green Party gathered 17% of the search vote compared to the two major parties.
So we have a conundrum. Al Gore has a slim head-to-head edge over George W. Bush in recent weeks. His running mate leads Bush's running mate. On sheer numbers alone, he's your winner.
But over the entire campaign we see a much higher level of Web interest in the GOP and its candidates. We think this indicates a stronger Republican voter base than is commonly accepted. And the Web is showing us a surprising, even startling, level of interest in the Green Party and its candidate Ralph Nader. Nader voters, of course, are most likely to cut into Gore's vote totals.
These latter points carry the day. We think Lycos users are telling us that George W. Bush will win the popular vote for president of the United States. (The electoral college? Who knows.) And with that strong base of Web interest we predict the GOP will retain control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
And we think Russell Crowe has the early lead for next year's Oscars, too.
