IMAGINE AN ELECTION—A close one. You’re undecided. So you type the name of one of the candidates into your search engine of choice. (Actually, let’s not be coy here. In most of the world, one search engine dominates; in Europe and North America, it’s Google.) And Google coughs up, in fractions of a second, articles and facts about that candidate. Great! Now you are an informed voter, right? But a study published this week says that the order of those results, the ranking of positive or negative stories on the screen, can have an enormous influence on the way you vote. And if the election is close enough, the effect could be profound enough to change the outcome.
In other words: Google’s ranking algorithm for search results could accidentally steal the presidency. “We estimate, based on win margins in national elections around the world,” says Robert Epstein, a psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and one of the study’s authors, “that Google could determine the outcome of upwards of 25 percent of all national elections.”
Update: Google Search Data May Predict Upcoming Election Results -- Value Walk
WNU Editor: Google still has some work to do .... case in point .... they were right on who was going to win the U.K. election this year, but they were completely wrong on the numbers of seats that each political party won .... Google Search tips Cameron to win election - and Nigel Farage's Ukip will beat Labour and the Liberal Democrats (Daily Mail)
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