2012 election candidate popularity as told by the search engines

Hello everyone! For my first thread here on ATS I'd like to compare search trends from Google and Yahoo in regards to the 2012 candidates. In my opinion these trends give great non-biased insights to candidate popularity, or at least our interest in the candidate. We're going to omit Obama from these results simply because his name is used much more online. Also, we will only be looking at results from the U.S. (though worldwide results are generally the same) from the past 12 months. Lets begin:

Google
Candidate Names




Candidate Policies




Yahoo
Ron Vs. Mitt


Ron Vs. Rick
Rick Vs. Mitt


So what we consistently see in our searches is Ron Paul on top. If you go to the Google links you can see the break down by state, and you'll notice on the map that the entire country is blue (for Paul). So without exception his name is being searched more throughout the entire country, and by a significant margin (policy searches on Ron Paul were triple that of anyone else). I've actually been following this for a couple of months, in November Rick Perry's top searches were "Rick Perry: oops!" and "Ron Paul humiliates rick perry".

Our Yahoo searches were made with a time span of three months, simply to make it a little more fair for Mitt. Yahoo shows us a breakdown of the user's age by search term. In the categories above the age of 45 we see Mitt Romney does better.

Why do you think Ron Paul isn't as appealing to the older generations as it is the younger ones? Do you think the generation gap matters when it comes to actual voter turnout, since the older generations vote more consistently? Obviously more young people use the internet, do you think that skews the results?

The internet does not lie for political reasons, this is the most true thing i have seen in awhile. You cannot argue internet searches, as it seems that RP is being searched more by far than anyone else.

I think RP thought this through, because there are a lot of older people that will vote for dem or repub regardless of who is running. Not saying that its always the case, but i think that may be a part of it.

His policies make sense for people who are younger and a desire for change that is long overdue. We are stuck in a system that has barely changed since the early 1900s. And really, the young people have a poop voting record, and i think he realized if you mobilize the young folks to vote for something they believe in, then he stands more of a chance.

Change is needed. And the younger generations see it far more than the older ones (no offence is meant, i'm talking my own experience)

I just noticed something. If you see the map of the candidate searches, notice how Iowa is super dark? His search percentage is almost as high as it can get in Iowa. I'm going to go ahead and make my prediction for the caucuses...

Also, I forgot Newt Gingrich, he's tied with Romney.

Thanks for the reply!