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Ahead of the Midterms, Google News Lab Created a Way to See What’s Trending at the State, County and City Level | Poynter

With close to 500 House and Senate seats in play with the midterm elections, Google News Lab started thinking about how local reporters might use local data in their work.

On Wednesday, the team went live with a Google Trends Midterm page with data on real-time Google search trends at the state, county and city level. (Disclosure: The Google News Initiative funds some training and projects at Poynter.)

What political topics are people in your county searching for? How has that changed over time? What questions are people asking?

Trends can show local journalists what issues matter where they live that may not be reflected in polls, said Simon Rogers, News Lab’s data editor. One example, he said, was when Andrew Gillum shot to the top of search rankings in Florida the day before the primary, which Gillum won in a surprise victory.

It doesn’t replace polling, he stressed,“but you can get a real sense of the key issues.”

The News Lab also partnered with ProPublica to build an Election DataBot, which includes “Google Trends data, candidate spending data, campaign ads, deleted tweets and campaign statements,” according to a blog post. You can set up alerts for different races to see when they spike in search.

Source: Ahead of the midterms, Google News Lab created a way to see what’s trending at the state, county and city level | Poynter