Sorry about the slow postings as of late. I've been in personal overload as of late and just can't make the time to post. Anyway, I was cruising through Twitter last night and I noticed some folks pimping the JD Hayworth money bomb against Senator McCain. So I decided to poke around on Google Trends to see what I could find.
Regular Old Search Trends
Nothing surprising here with McCain holding 
a large lead in search trends, but I wanted to dig further because I believe there had to be more going on with potential social networking links. BTW - the data was limited to Arizona but really didn't change much if you looked at USA. Also, notice the huge spike when Palin campaigned for McCain.
Insight for Search
OK now this more interesting and if you are cheering for McCain this looks a little worrisome. First, McCain still holds a big lead but with the more recent data you can see the Palin Spike has come and gone and those lines look like they could cross. Second, when you look at the regional data (not shown on my blog) you see that Hayworth has nothing going on in the rest of the US but does have some significant interest in Arizona which....is the critical state - not as much as McCain but still significant. 
Finally, when you compare the search traffic growth relative to the news and current events category you'll see Hayworth is on the rise but has done that in the past.
So what does the data tell me besides the obvious which is that this is a competitive race? Hayworth still has a long way to go and when there is significant news or activity he sees spike in online activity. However, money bombs, retweets, links, and other social networking activities in favor of him don't seem to have a lasting effect; that is a lasting effect yet.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
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