John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate has rocked the world of political commentary, mainstream media pundits and the blogosphere alike. However, for those of us who compulsively consume political media, one crucial question yet remains: "Does the high level of news attention really translate into real world impact for non-political junkies?" My analysis of search trends answers that question with an emphatic "yes". The implications for this observation likely indicate that John McCain’s choice of running mate will be a defining moment for the 2008 campaign, though just whether it will help or hurt him in electoral terms is something that cannot yet be judged objectively.
Sarah Palin’s selection may have pierced the consciousness of the more Americans than any vice presidential choice in U.S. history. This nationally unkown but locally popular governor has been embroiled in various scandals throughout her career (notably troopergate among many others), belying her reputation for reform. McCain’s choice has piqued Americans’ interest like no V.P. candidate I can think of. In fact, the level of interest in Palin has rapidly eclipsed Americans’ interest in sex, something accomplished only during the height of the Superbowl and Olympics frenzies. It is this level of interest, that I am calling the "sex boundary". Only news events of this magnitude seem capable of piercing the consciousness of the typical American who isn’t already interested in them.
Before continuing, let me describe how I come to this conclusion. In order to address this issue, I turned to Google Trends. For those who haven’t played with this wonderful toy, Google Trends documents the prevalence of search terms and their change in time. So, when a big news story hits (Biden is chosen as V.P., a hurricane hits, or Brittney stubs her toe) the search terms related to those events also tend to spike. One great example of this is comparing the terms "Super Bowl"/"Superbowl", "Barack Obama", and "Hillary Clinton" for 2008. You can see that in Figure 1 below (don't forget to hover over the image for the caption!).
Since Superbowl Sunday was only two days prior to Super Tuesday, you can
see that that the relative amounts of attention that the Googling public pays to various events can vary quite a bit. In order to control control for varying levels of interest that wax and wane with the news cycle and current events, I sought an index variable; a search term that would remain relatively constant over the period of interest. I was interested in finding something that Americans have a relatively constant interest in but wouldn’t change with the vagaries of the 24 hour news cycle. In other words, particular needs that people always have and could be easily expressed through the Google search box. I was also interested in terms with a fairly high level of interest, so I could avoid the stochastic effects of small sample sizes. So, to start with, I compared the following search terms:
- shopping;
- books;
- weather;
- news;
- sex.
One small modification I made to all of the search terms except for "news" was to exclude the term "news" so that Google wouldn’t add annoying links to news stories on the graphs. I limited my search to searches originating in the U.S. during August, 2008. The results for this can be below in Figure 2:
Given the results in Figure 2 above, it is clear that specific issues like "weather" and "sex" weigh heavily on the minds of the Googling public as does the rather generic category of "news". However, in the "weather" and "news" categories, there seems to be substantial variation that likely depends on the news cycle. In fact, the Google trend above for "weather" certainly reflects the approach of Hurrican Gustav, while the "news" category likely reflects the nearly coinciding party conventions, hurricane Gustav, and the V.P. picks all taking place in quick succession, combining to yield a relatively newsworthy late August.
In the end, I chose "sex" as the most reliable index category. In fact, even the variation in the trends for "sex" is remarkably consistent, consistently peaking to the same levels every Friday and Saturday night before falling back down to a constant baseline level for "school nights". I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for that "coincidence", but I suspect it somehow involves questional keyboard hygiene. But I digress.
In order to get a good feeling for the level of excitement generated by the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain, you can plot their search terms over August, as in the figure below. Clearly, not even the conventions have pierced the basic unrelenting interest in sex indicated below. For me at least, this indicates that the news-rich political bubble we all inhabit bears little relation to the public sphere at large.
So, the really interesting figure is the next one. In it, I have added both V.P. candidates.
Notably, Joe Biden makes a huge splash, capping months of speculation about Obama’s choice as a running mate. He nearly even catches up to "sex" for a brief period, though the unlucky timing of the announcement raised the bar out of reach for him. What’s truly astonishing (at least to me) is just how rapidly Sarah Palin shattered the sex barrier, making Biden’s bounce appear pathetic by comparison.
So, it is clear that Palin (and by extension, McCain) is getting enormous scrutiny as a result of her unexpected selection as V.P. This increased level of attention will almost certainly amplify whatever inherent advantages and/or disadvantages she brings to the ticket. The question is, will she help or hurt? I (obviously) believe that her policies are undesirable, but will the general public who doesn't obsessively consume political news come to the same conclusion? The depth of the public's unfamiliarity with Palin combined with what is turning out to be a more and more "colorful" background seems to put the impact of this pick into unknown territory. The figures above really surprised me, especially the failure of Biden or Obama to even temporarily pierce the background interest in weather or sex.
What thoughts do y'all have? What should we do to focus this intense scrutiny towards her questionable record of public service, lack of interest in national and international issues, and sympathy toward extreme positions of the religious right? I think McCain's misstep in allowing her vetting to go on in America's living-room offers us a golden opportunity to define her. But how do we do that, practically speaking? To kick things off, I think it is essential that we avoid family issues, as they don't bear on her policy opinions, qualifications, or her understanding of American needs. Sure, there are some tenuous ties between policy issues (such as abstinence-only education, etc.) and her family situation, but I think those points can be made without referencing her family at all.
Any other suggestions of what to do and what not to do to focus this spotlight on Palin in a way favorable to progressive issues?
Update [2008-9-2 23:37:3 by LwPhD]:
Just to keep tracking the ongoing change in Sarah Palin's profile, here's real-time updated search. Sorry, you'll have to click on the link to see the results, as DKos doesn't allow images hosted on Google.