Google trends isn’t giving away any secrets when it comes to possible McCain picks for vice-president:
Google Trends: romney, jindal, tom ridge, palin, fiorina
If you judge by search popularity (and I do; after all, I’m the Google Pollster), then Romney looks like the front runner. What’s most interesting about the rise in searches for Romney is that: we all know him pretty well already, don’t we? I’d have expected a lot more action for relative unknowns like Pawlenty or Palin.
Digging deeper into what searchers are combining with these names, I took a look at the Google AdWords keyword tool. Here are combinations for Pawlenty, in order of popularity:
Google AdWords: Pawlenty Searches
I see a lot of vanilla-looking searches here - no scandals to be found. The only issue-oriented searches are “pawlenty tax” and “pawlenty bridge.”
Looking at Google results for “pawlenty bridge”, I see that results are primarily concerned with the fatal Minnesota bridge collapse last year. The political angle in Google’s search results is mixed, but does include several left-leaning sites discussing the link between the bridge collapse and lack of infrastructure funding under Republicans in general, and Pawlenty in particular. There is also a mini-tiff between McCain and Pawlenty, when the presidental candidate blamed pork-barrel funding for the disaster, and Pawlenty stepped in to call the remarks inappropriate. Not a lot of excitement here - maybe McCain will lay a big smooch on Pawlenty’s wife at the GOP convention to get the searches going.
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