How Hot Is Your Candidate?
A Lycos 50 Presidential Poll
The American presidential primaries are (finally) approaching. Let's see which candidates are hot online.We took a list of last week's 25,000 most popular Lycos user search terms and scanned for candidate names. We totalled the numbers and then for comparison (and for fun) we paired each candidate with a pop culture figure who got the same number of searches last week. The results, from the most popular names to the least, are below.
1. Bill Bradley
Keanu Reeves
2. George W. Bush
Betty Crocker
3. John McCain
Bugs Bunny
4. Al Gore
Plato
5. Alan Keyes
Ann Landers
6. Donald Trump
Mary Queen of Scots
7. Steve Forbes
Diana Rigg
Did not qualify: Gary Bauer, Pat Buchanan, Orrin Hatch, Ross Perot, Jesse Ventura.
Back in October we did this same thing, scanning one week's queries for candidates. In October the list looked like this:
1. Al Gore
2. Bill Bradley
3. George W. Bush
4. Jesse Ventura
5. John McCain
6. Donald Trump
7. Pat Buchanan
8. Steve Forbes
So: in two months Al Gore has dropped from first to fourth place. Last week he got only 52% as many searches as Bill Bradley -- a startling decline. Reform party maybe-candidate Jesse Ventura, #4 in October, dropped from the list entirely, as did the chatty Pat Buchanan.
Talk show host Alan Keyes, on the other hand, was off the boards in October but now stands at #5. (He received about 34% the queries of Bill Bradley.) Bradley, Bush and McCain all retained their previous strength. (Bush got 91% the queries of Bradley, McCain 59%.) "Bradley platform" was a popular search, making him the only candidate to get significant queries about his platform; perhaps the policy wonks are gravitating his way?
As for Hatch and Bauer, who failed to qualify in October or December: better luck next month, fellows. We'll run our web poll again in January.
Notes: Search logs are for the week ending December 25. We counted only searches which were plainly for a candidate: queries for Bill Bradley and Bradley campaign were counted for candidate Bill Bradley, while searches simply for Bradley were ignored. We assigned 80% of all searches for George Bush to candidate George W. Bush; the other 20% are presumed to be for his father, ex-president George Bush. "Equally popular" means plus or minus 5 total user searches. (Sorry, we can't reveal exact search numbers.) "Did not qualify" means the candidate's name was not in the top 25,000 queries. For amusement purposes only; please do not base your vote on this list.
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