Are Trends Heading Freitas’ Way?

Google Trends is a fun little tool. Drop in some search terms and you can see interest over time and even within certain geographical areas. It’s hardly an exact metric for many things, but it can give some interesting insights on interests over time – especially leading into something like election day.

So what is it saying about next Tuesday’s Virginia Senate Primary? Despite what the Corey Stewart campaign wants you to believe, we may have a horserace on our hands.

Over the last seven days, interests in Virginia for the candidates running for the Republican nomination for Senate have bounced around day to day, but Nick Freitas has been closing the interest gap with Stewart as of late.

But what does any of this mean?

Google Trends show search interests over time relative to its highest point over time. Putting those numbers side by side, you can see how interest compares between search terms. In this case, over the last seven days, Stewart’s interest ranking is 26 compared to 25 for Freitas and 8 for Jackson.

Unfortunately this doesn’t show positive or negative interest, just interest. So it should concern the Stewart camp that the breakout related searches for Corey over the last week have been concerning one of his personal heroes: Paul Nehlen:

Now, this is far from an exact science. But it’s one of many finger-in-the-wind techniques one can look at to get a feel for how a race could be turning, especially in absence of any accurate polling.

For example, leading into the GOP Primary for Governor last year, Corey Stewart’s search interest surpassed Ed Gillespie’s, showing a surge over the closing days of the campaign that indicated a closer race than any of the polling suggested. In fact, a couple more days of this and we may have seen a different result.

It’s not the best barometer by a mile, but Google Trends can give insight otherwise lacking on low interest, low dollar, low turnout statewide campaigns. The next few days will be interesting to watch, especially as all sides go into their final pitches and as the heat gets turned up between Stewart and Freitas in the closing days.