Anne Zelenka provided a graph that shows searches for “hillary clinton” with a clear lead over those for “barack obama” and “john edwards.”  The content of the graph was, by the way, originally suggested by Google’s own Marissa Mayer.

So what does this mean?  All other issues (representative sample, etc.) aside, there’s one major problem: whether or not all the searches for Clinton reflect positive interest (or at least less negative interest than whatever’s present in the searches for other candidates). 

Still, Zelenka noted, “Mayer showed how Google Trends accurately predicted George W. Bush’s dominance over John Kerry in 2004 and Nicolas Sarkozy’s win in May of this year over Segolene Royal in the French presidential election.”

And in semi-related news, Jonathan Richards began an article by stating, “Bill and Hillary Clinton are among the guests expected to descend on a tiny Caribbean island this weekend for the wedding of Larry Page, the billionaire co-founder of Google.”

YouTube Goes To The Elephants

The GOP is still a bit behind though. Nielsen//NetRatings reports that Republican videos were viewed just under a third of the time users spend watching political videos in April. But that’s an increase of 21 percent over March.

Democrat candidate videos, in contrast, pulled in 69 percent in the same month, actually decreasing by about the same amount.

“The Democrats have taken an early lead in the online race to the White House, leveraging Web 2.0 forums and technologies to their benefit,” said Jason Lee*, media analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings.

“Of course the nature of social media is that not all coverage is positive. In March, the anti-Hillary Clinton ‘1984’ video drew significant traffic, which accounts in part for the Democratic lead in time spent for the month.”

In March, Democrats hogged all the spotlight at the monstrously successful video-sharing site, pulling 89 percent of the total time spent by viewers. For Republicans, it was just 10 percent.

What’s more interesting is individual candidate interest. Hillary Clinton attracted 77 percent of viewing time March, dropping 54 percentage points in April as viewers turned their attention to Barack Obama (up from 9 percent to 20 percent) and John Edwards (up from 5.7 percent to 16 percent).

Republican candidate John McCain saw a nice spike, too, but not for good reasons – it was rendition of "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran" that won their attention.

“The Web is changing the way we consume politics. Whereas talk radio and other ideology-specific media outlets attract party loyalists, we found that there was an 18 percent overlap between unique visitors to Democratic and Republican videos on YouTube.

"The site offers viewers videos that are relevant to what they have already seen, which leads to the discovery and consumption of new content across party lines,” said Lee.

^{*It’s like living in the Twilight Zone as all these Jasons keep popping up. Jason was the most popular name for baby boys in the 1970s and now we’re paying the price. I went with my full name to differentiate myself from the five other Jason Millers who are writers, one that’s a rodeo guy, and another that’s a race car driver (thanks Google), only to learn that an actor on the show "The OC" was also using my full name (but I kill in the Google results for it), and he most likely is quite angry at Jason Lee, the actor in "My Name Is Earl," whom I’ve had my eye on since "Mallrats," and who this Nielsen//NetRatings Jason Lee must also be miffed about. All the Jason Millers, Jason Lees, and Jason Lee Millers need to have a meeting to work this out. I may have to officially change my name to Jason Lee Miller, Lord and Baron of Ladonia.} 

According to the NetRatings poll, 36.6 percent of U.S. adults online are Republicans, followed by 30.8 percent Democrats and 17.3 percent registered as Indepenents.

Nielsen/NetRatings analyst Ken Cassar speculates on potential contributing factors to the gap represented in the poll’s findings.

“The fact that the online population is more heavily composed of Republicans than Democrats is principally a function of the Republican party’s higher composition within the overall electorate.”

“This is exacerbated by the fact that online penetration continues to be deeper among affluent households, which have historically skewed Republican,” Cassar continued.

Further analysis into the findings indicates a fundamental distinction in online viewership between Democrats and Republicans.

Republican web surfers tended to favor sites that contained news and conservative political commentary, whereas Democratic users leaned toward destinations focusing on culture and entertainment – often with tendencies toward African American stylings in both respects.

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The online newspaper of choice for Republicans is the Wall Street Journal, with 40.2 percent of readers indicating themselves as registered members of the GOP. Conversely, Democrats constitute 52.3 percent of New York Times readers online.

When respondents were asked about their political leaning, the largest segment, 36.1 percent, identified themselves as “Moderate.” The second largest segment, 32.5 percent, identified themselves as “Conservative/Very Conservative,” while 19.8 percent of respondents identified themselves as “Liberal/Very Liberal.”

With the Internet playing an ever-increasing role as a information platform for the voting public, will these statistics translate into a happy ending for the Republican party at the polls?

Or will the Democrats get the last laugh by winning back control of the legislature, and consequently, start a “GOP is SOL” video campaign on YouTube and Google Video?

I suppose we’ll find out in less than a week.

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.