Legal Research

Something(s) To Think About While You’re Standing In Line This Afternoon

UK Internet searches for the US Election

Hitwise gives us an interesting chart showing the UK search activity for Obama, Biden, McCain, and Palin.  (Geeze … look at the spike for Palin.  I’ve noted this previously.)  From their analysis:

“As you can see, the Democrat candidate Barack Obama has received more searches than his Republican rival every week save for a couple at the end of the summer.  However it is Senator McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, who has been the most searched for American politician in the UK over the last couple of months.”

This confirms what my mother-in-law (who’s English) has been saying for the last 5 weeks or so — the Brits prefer Obama over McCain, but are fascinated by Palin.  And they think that our politicians are way more interesting than theirs.

Nov. 4, 1952: Univac Gets Election Right, But CBS Balks

Wired notes that 56 years ago, contrary to what the polls were saying, the Univac computer projected that Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower would defeat Democrat Adlai Stevenson by 438 electoral votes to 93.  CBS News chief Sig Mickelson did not air the projection, thinking that the computer had made an error.  He was right — UNIVAC was off by about 1%.  Final electoral tallies: Eisenhower 442, Stevenson 89.

See … You can always trust the machine.

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on November 04, 2008 (boomark / email).