Skip to main content

On Election Day, Google tracked nationwide voting issues on a real-time map

google voter issues map rsz img 20161110 230601
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Google shined a light on an unfortunate, but nonetheless important, issue around Tuesday’s election: voter suppression. As part of a collaboration with design studio Pitch Interactive, the Mountain View, California-based search company published a visualization of problems experienced by voters at polling stations nationwide.

Google’s map, supplied with a combination of historical and real-time data from Google Trends, highlighted parts of the country where the electorate encountered resistance. Issues were categorized by relevance: problems with voting machines, long wait times, information on inactive voters, provisional ballot statuses, and voter intimidation. Each were designated on the map by circular, pulsating blips; the bigger the blip, the  larger the number of users in a given location conducted searches.

Recommended Videos

In order to filter out extraneous data points, local search volume for relevant terms had to be twice as high compared to national volume. And viewers could toggle additional filters, like one that concealed particular categories of issues and a ticker that highlighted spikes in interest. “When it comes to this kind of tool, you have to give people something they understand and want to play with,” Google News Lab data editor Simon Rogers said. “[Otherwise] it’s not going to tell a story or communicate anything.”

voter_issues
Image used with permission by copyright holder

The map was a part of ProPublica’s Electionland project, a real-time reporting effort that sought to track voting issues in real time. Google and over two hundred news organizations fielded phone calls and monitored social media for signs of illicit pushback at the polls.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

“This is the first time Google Trends data has been made available in real time during a U.S. election, and it’s really interesting stuff,” Rogers said. “We’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible. We’re showing that this data is something that can be used to complement news in a way that wasn’t possible in the past.”

Google made a concerted effort to get out the vote. Earlier this year, it debuted a tool that gave interested parties up-to-date information on both the Republican and Democratic national conventions. In the weeks leading up the election, the company rolled out helpful widgets on Google Search and YouTube, an interactive Google Doodle, Google Now alerts on Android smartphones, and more. And after the election, Google published real-time results in Google searches in over 30 languages.

No matter your feelings about the outcome, Google’s effort appeared to have the desired effect. The search giant said that YouTube users spent 20 million hours watching the presidential debate live-streams on YouTube, and it observed a 233 percent increase in traffic for “how to vote” compared with 2012. “The voting process is complicated and overwhelming,” Emily Moxley, a team leader and project manager at Google, said. “[We] collected everything into one location, in terminology that’s easy to grok.”

Kyle Wiggers
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kyle Wiggers is a writer, Web designer, and podcaster with an acute interest in all things tech. When not reviewing gadgets…
PayPal vs. Venmo vs. Cash App vs. Apple Cash: which app should you use?
PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, and Apple Wallet apps on an iPhone.

We’re getting closer every day to an entirely cashless society. While some folks may still carry around a few bucks for emergencies, electronic payments are accepted nearly everywhere, and as mobile wallets expand, even traditional credit and debit cards are starting to fall by the wayside.

That means many of us are past the days of tossing a few bills onto the table to pay our share of a restaurant tab or slipping our pal a couple of bucks to help them out. Now, even those things are more easily doable from our smartphones than our physical wallets.

Read more
How to change margins in Google Docs
Laptop Working from Home

When you create a document in Google Docs, you may need to adjust the space between the edge of the page and the content --- the margins. For instance, many professors have requirements for the margin sizes you must use for college papers.

You can easily change the left, right, top, and bottom margins in Google Docs and have a few different ways to do it.

Read more
What is Microsoft Teams? How to use the collaboration app
A close-up of someone using Microsoft Teams on a laptop for a videoconference.

Online team collaboration is the new norm as companies spread their workforce across the globe. Gone are the days of primarily relying on group emails, as teams can now work together in real time using an instant chat-style interface, no matter where they are.

Using Microsoft Teams affords video conferencing, real-time discussions, document sharing and editing, and more for companies and corporations. It's one of many collaboration tools designed to bring company workers together in an online space. It’s not designed for communicating with family and friends, but for colleagues and clients.

Read more