Our superficial political wants, tracked by Google!

Every presidential election, like a stomachache after eating too much ice cream, we get bombarded with stupid polls, like the infamous "Who'd you rather have a beer with . . ." brainteaser during the Bush/Kerry race in 2004. The most recent example of this nonsense has been the "Who would you rather have take care of your children . . ." poll between candidates John McCain and Barack Obama. Obama won, most likely because folks were afraid their kids would get too hopped up on hard candy if they were left alone with Ol' Grampy John for an afternoon. I mean, we've all seen the Simpsons episode when Grampa babysits Bart and Lisa:

Bart: Grampa, Mom was in such a hurry, she forgot to give you this.
It's a list of the things Lisa and I can and can't do.

Grampa: [reads] Eh heh. Uh huh. You're allowed to smoke cigars?

These sort of mindless polls made me wonder about our superficial political desires, from candidate's looks to clothes. Honestly, I can't tell you how many people have stumbled upon my Cindy McCain/Crypt Keeper comparison since I posted it. It seems, regardless of our political desires, we always want to find out really useless info on our potential leaders.

So, I headed over to Google Trends to do a little test. Google Trends essentially tracks the popularity of web searches over a range of time and projects them into a volumed index. I kept my searches simple. I only wanted to know info from the past month, and only in the United States. I started with straight trend searches for both the names "Barack Obama" and "John McCain." Here are Obama's trend numbers:

And, here are McCain's:

Both seem to have spiked around the same time and have tapered off in the past week and a half.

Now, I wanted to know what kind of physical attributes each candidate had that struck Americans. Surprisingly, most of my combinations of phrases did not bring up results (well, not completely surprisingly, as McCain pretty much has nothing eye catching about his appearance). The only thing that I got a hit from was a search for "Obama Shirt." Here are the results:

 

For whatever reason, Mr. Obama's standard white shirt is consistently getting higher trend searches than the candidate himself. Granted, the Y-axis of each Google Trend search represents only the volume of searches on average and not a "real" number, but this may be a sign for the McCain camp to start putting their candidate in some sharp outfits over the next two months. Maybe that'll be the next challenge on Project Runway! I can just see the uncomfortable runway show now . . .

Moving onto the candidates for vice president, I skipped the straight trend search and only searched for physical attribute trends. So, for each candidate, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, I ran the same phrases: hair, face, glasses (for Sarah Palin), clothes, suit, shirt, shoes, and tie (for Joe Biden). Not surprisingly, the biggest hit I got was for Sarah Palin's glasses:

What are all the hip art chicks going to do now that their frames have been snatched by soccer moms across the country? Seriously, this could be problematic.

The only trend result I got for Senator Biden was when I searched for his hair. I doubt these searches were attempts by anyone to compliment his style, but rather to make light of his follicle foibles:

Biden, like McCain, apparently just doesn't have any physical attributes that people want to search for.

Finally, I decided to do a search for each presidential and vice presidential candidate and the word "underwear." This being America, I expected the worst. But, I was happy to find no trend searches for any of the candidates. However, when I changed my search terms to swimwear, things changed. Of the 4, only Palin came up in a trend. Honestly, I thought more folks would want to see Biden or McCain in a speedo, but what do I know?

Here's the search results for "Palin Bikini:"

So, what does all this mean? Perhaps it shows that we're all a little superficial in our political choices. It also means that women are far more mature in their web searches than men, at least when it comes to wanting to see a candidate in little clothing. Also, if you're Tina Fey or Lisa Loeb, you'd better stock up on spare frames before Lens Crafters gets backordered. And, I'd sink some money into the Oxford shirt industry. It may be the solution to our shaky economy.

But, what I think it really means is: Obama Shirt vs. Palin Glasses. Two items enter the caged ring, only one leaves! Someone get on making that viral video!