Glad to be back in the office after a one day work trip turned into an epic four day journey across Europe. It has all been because of the other big story — the erupting volcano — so here’s an interesting trend to have a look at.
The chart here shows relative search volumes on Google, and sure enough there are around twice as many searches for the volcano right now in the UK than for the election. But while the fiery Icelandic monster continues to spew ash into Europe’s airspace, there’s another digital trend developing elsewhere: ever more people are searching online for “Liberal Democrats”, in fact the trend suggests that imminently Nick Clegg’s party will see a higher volume of searches than Labour currently do (see green and purple lines meeting).
Given that the majority of internet journeys begin at a search engine, this kind of analysis can indicate what’s on people’s minds. So when the ash finally clears it’ll be interesting to see how the LibDems emerge and whether search trends are an opinion poll in their own right. I’ll be checking this one again after the next TV debate.
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