Since the conclusion of the 2016 presidential election, people have been rightfully pushing off the idea that we need to start discussing the 2020 race anytime soon. But with only 22 months to go and the first potential nominees already throwing their hats into the ring, it seems we can push it off no longer. Thankfully, the political minds at The Washington Post and Google have created a pretty handy tool that allows us to skip all the tedious election activities like picking candidates, watching them campaign, and reluctantly voting for them. Now we can just ask the internet who would win.
Using search engine inquiries aggregated by Google Trends, we’re able to see how the US electoral map would break down between two candidates, objects, or concepts. This, of course, assumes that Google search interest is equivalent to a vote, which we’re pretty sure is totally scientifically sound and accurate. Don’t bother fact checking that, just look at these results for Cats vs Dogs:
Take that, cats! Try to step up your ground game in the Midwest a little more next time. Once you’ve entered your two candidates and gotten the results, you can click on individual states to see just how divided America is on these very important issues. Of course, the people don’t get it right all of the time…
Hey! Now you don’t have to watch that movie everyone said was bad:
It doesn’t take a political genius to notice that the majority of these races are clean sweeps, with one candidate completely dominating the conversation. Sure, this could be a symptom of a less-than-accurate vote tallying system. But maybe it means that we’re actually a lot less divided than we once thought. At least when it comes to pets and preferred sandwich contents.
You can try out the election simulator yourself over on the Washington Post’s website.
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