First on June 11, and then on July 17, IPR posted the results of “Google News Primaries” — the number of Google News hits for each “alternative” presidential candidate. Well, the September 13 results are in, and the top four are still in the same position — though the gap between them has narrowed considerably.
- “Bob Barr” “Libertarian” 1547, 36.20%
- “Ralph Nader” “Independent” 1429, 33.43%
- “Cynthia McKinney” “Green” 626, 14.65%
- “Chuck Baldwin” “Constitution” 595, 13.92%
- “Brian Moore” “Socialist” 29, 0.68%
- “Gloria La Riva” “Socialism” 19, 0.44%
- “Charles Jay” “Boston Tea” 13, 0.30%
- “Gene Amondson” “Prohibition” 12, 0.28%
- “Roger Calero” “Socialist” 4, 0.09%
All candidates except for Charles Jay, who benefited from a “spike” in coverage related to his Boston Tea Party nomination last time, increased their number of hits. The Prohibition Party’s Gene Amondson actually showed the greatest improvement, percentage-wise, though his leap from two hits to twelve is unlikely to set the world on fire. More realistically, Chuck Baldwin was the big winner by this measure. Ralph Nader, too, should be noted for increasing his hits by 47.78%, whereas his primary rival Bob Barr managed just a 14.93% increase.
- “Gene Amondson” “Prohibition” +500.00%
- “Chuck Baldwin” “Constitution” +395.83%
- “Brian Moore” “Socialist” +163.64%
- “Cynthia McKinney” “Green” +145.49%
- “Gloria La Riva” “Socialism” +58.33%
- “Ralph Nader” “Independent” +47.78%
- “Roger Calero” “Socialist” +33.33%
- “Bob Barr” “Libertarian” +14.93%
- “Charles Jay” “Boston Tea” -23.53%
Putting things in relative terms, here is how each much candidate gained or lost in terms of “market share.”
- “Gene Amondson” “Prohibition” +73.94%
- “Chuck Baldwin” “Constitution” +68.46%
- “Brian Moore” “Socialist” +40.68%
- “Cynthia McKinney” “Green” +36.30%
- “Gloria La Riva” “Socialism” +1.23%
- “Ralph Nader” “Independent” -5.83%
- “Roger Calero” “Socialist” -17.29%
- “Bob Barr” “Libertarian” -36.07%
- “Charles Jay” “Boston Tea” -104.50%
Now, excluding the four “major” candidates — Barr, Nader, McKinney, and Baldwin — let’s take a look at where the “minor” candidates hits are coming from. After all, if they’re all coming from IPR, TPW, and BAN, then they’re not worth quite as much as “mainstream” hits.
Of Brian Moore’s 29 hits, five come from IPR and four come from Ballot Access News. TPW is ignoring the Socialist Party USA candidate. Moore’s other 20 hits come from media outlets not dedicated to third-party political news.
Gloria La Riva had 19 hits, but six of them were from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which is somehow indexed by Google News. She had one hit from IPR and another from BAN — again, zero from TPW. That leaves her with 11 “good” hits.
Charles Jay had just 13 hits. Surprisingly, only two were from IPR, with another one each coming from BAN and TPW. A fifth “bad” hit came from BetUs in an article written by Jay.
Gene Amondson “soared” from two hits to 12. Two of his hits came from IPR and one from BAN (zero from TPW).
Roger Calero, the candidate of the Socialist Workers Party, had a whopping four hits. Without IPR’s help, he would have remained at three — where he was two months ago. His other hits come from a Nolan Chart article, from which all of these candidates derived a hit, a Norweigan article, and one mainstream media piece from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
