Google Searches Spike for Harris, Trump Policies on Election Day Eve

Searches on Google about the policies of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have increased dramatically as voters head to the polls on Election Day.

Phrases like “Kamala Harris guidelines” and “Donald Trump interview” spiked on Google Trends just hours before voters made their final decision about who to elect for the White House.

States like Utah and Georgia saw particularly high spikes in searches related to Harris' positions on education and immigration. Third-party candidates like Chase Oliver, who is running for the Libertarian Party, and Cornel West also saw significant increases in search interest.

The surge in interest began around November 1st and has steadily increased throughout the final stages of the campaign.

North Carolina and Georgia are both critical swing states, and polls show them both very close. These two states were among the states with the highest internet traffic related to Trump and Harris' political positions.

Interest in Harris and Trump was similar, with both candidates receiving large numbers of searches on Google after November 3rd.

The swing states that searched most often for Trump were Arizona and North Carolina, while the swing states that searched most often for Harris were Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada.

With the election expected to be extremely close, undecided voters on Election Day could be the difference between a Harris or Trump victory.

While the search terms suggest that some voters are still undecided about who they want to vote for, millions of Americans have already made that choice. More than 70 million voters cast their ballots early, either in person or by mail.

Figures collected by the University of Florida Election Lab's Early Voter Tracker show that 42,664,880 people voted early in person, while 35,376,421 mail-in ballots were returned as of Monday, November 4th.

However, that number is almost half of the total 158.4 million votes cast in the 2020 election, where millions of voters used alternative methods due to the COVID pandemic.

Early voting was particularly high in swing states where these search terms saw the highest increases, as over half of Georgia had already voted.

Likewise, more than 4.4 million North Carolinians have already voted before Election Day, meaning Google trends may not be indicative of undecided voters in those states.

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