Barack Obama is coming out of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions with more interest on web search traffic than challenger Mitt Romney, according to a new analysis.
Obama and Romney went into the conventions with nearly equal shares of search engine interest -- Obama had slightly more interest in the long run before the conventions, but searches for Romney spiked periodically.
Romney's search traffic began to supersede that of Obama during the RNC, which ran from Aug. 27-30. However, when the RNC ended and the DNC began, Obama's search interest exploded: In the past 24 hours, approximately 75% of the searches for either candidate have been for the president.
Interest for Romney is now slightly climbing, possibly as a result of his comments about the Tuesday attack on the American consolate in Benghazi, Libya, which some observers viewed as off-key.
Other interesting results? Obama's search interest advantage is essentially nationwide, with a few states, such as Utah, more interested in Romney than others. Environmental issues are currently the most searched-about election issue, followed by the economy, gun control and abortion.
The data comes from data analytics firm Chitika's new Presidential Candidate Interest Tracker. Chitika's data is taken from a variety of major search engines, including Google, Bing, Yahoo and others. It's based on advertising impression data collected through the Chitika Ad Network, which includes 4 billion targeted ads every month on a network of more than 200,000 websites.
For more, including a 24-hour candidate search "heat map" of search interest for Obama and Romney in each state, see Chitika's Presidential Candidate Interest Tracker.