Google searches are not a great indicator of electoral success

This is the era of having more data at our disposal than we know what to do with. And so it is that I came to wonder: Do Google searches correlate well to election results?

This is not entirely an idle question. Google, through its Trends team, publishes data and analysis on what people — in the United States and internationally — are searching for. And since Google searches have become the default mechanism by which people get answers to their questions,…