With the 2016 GOP Presidential Primary likely to pit at least four candidates with Texas roots against one another (Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, and Rand Paul), we thought it would be interesting to look at Google Trends data on each of these candidates. In a sense, this data highlights who is receiving the most interest from the public at a given point in time during the campaign. The graphics are dynamically updated to display data from today along with the previous 12-months. The data represents how often a search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume on google.
6 June 2015: The Other Shoe Drops in Addison. As expected, Rick Perry formally declared his candidacy for the nomination in a military-themed declaration in the Dallas Area on June 4. A look at the Google Trends data suggests a continuation of the trend we've seen so far in the race. While Perry got the expected national media hits as a result of his entry, search term interest was much less than the interest of the announcements of the three candidates with significant Texas ties whose announcements have preceded him with roll out events (Cruz, Paul, Rubio). There may yet be more interest generated by the Thursday announcement over the weekend, so you can check back. Remember, the figure will update automatically.
2 May 2015: Waiting for Rick Perry? The Presidential Candidate Google Search Tracker suggests that coverage of the GOP presidential candidate in the graphic has flattened out. Search nterest in Hillary Clinton continues to dwarf the other candidates, though in the last week no doubt much of that interest has been negative as a result of coverage of the Clinton Foundation and her response to it.
15 April 2015: Looking at these graphics suggests two immediate observations based on the search data in the graphs as of today.
- Hillary Clinton's relatively low key announcement makes some sense given the high levels of baseline interest in her compared to other candidates. The GOP candidates who have announced so far have done so with the intention of increasing their name recognition through earned media. Hillary Clinton doesn't need a boost in her name ID, nor in her overall coverage. (More likely, as has been widely suggested, the more important task for Clinton is to affect the characteristics/tone of that media attention.)
- The decreased interest in the announcements of each successive declaration of candidacy for the GOP nomination provides a partial answer to some of the speculation about the benefits of Sen. Cruz's decision to jump into the race early and decisively: This tactic does appear to have increased public attention to Cruz more than those who have followed him so far – and by a significant margin.