During the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night, Fox will be using Google's data in its coverage. John Roberts, Fox News Channel's senior national correspondent, will host Google’s Abbi Tatton, manager of global communications and public affairs, to analyze trends.
This isn't the first time the two companies have paired up this election cycle. In September of last year, Fox co-hosted a debate with Google. The companies also worked together during last week's Iowa caucus. From their data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Google tracked search trends, search results and YouTube videos of the candidates' public appearances. Fox had exclusive access to broadcast from within the Data Center.
According to Roberts, Iowa was a "prototype."
"We had a lot of data," says Roberts. "We used Iowa to figure out how to best present it, and we'll be putting that up tonight."
Has Fox News found any interesting trends in Google's data? Absolutely, says Roberts.
"Google has been showing fascinating trends. There's an incredibly rich data stream, which allows you to look at primary states and determine what's really on the minds of voters. We'll be drilling down on that all day today."
Roberts says that between Saturday night's ABC debate and Tuesday morning, searches for "Jon Huntsman" were up 50% while those for "Rick Santorum" dropped by 35%. However, by late Tuesday morning, Santorum was back on the upswing.
What does that mean in terms of the primary?
"It shows a very fluid election year in New Hampshire," says Robert, who also acknowledged that more searches don't necessarily mean more support. "However, in the three days leading up to Iowa, the first, second and third top-searched candidates were Paul, Santorum and Romney. The one, two and three spots flipped in the actual results, but Google at least figured out who would be in the top three."
Roberts noted that Google isn't a perfect means of measuring support or predicting electoral results.
"It's not scientific, but it's somewhat predictive," he says. He considers Google an incredibly powerful tool for seeing exactly what's on people's minds at any given moment. "I look at it as a real-time passive poll."
Google made waves in the online political sphere by opening a new politics portal just ahead of the Iowa caucus. The portal offers election news, search trend information and video via YouTube.