Canada’s first ‘digital election’
How Google is working to make voters more informed
We are in the midst of Canada’s first digital election, and it’s a game-changer. For the first time, one in every three voters will rely almost exclusively on digital sources for their election information and news — they have no cable or satellite, watch less than two hours of live TV per week or simply prefer online sources only. These connected Canadians aren’t just millennials — 20 per cent of voters aged 50 and older are “digital-only.” That group of digitally savvy Boomers alone represents almost 10 per cent of the electorate.
With such a large and growing number of voters relying on the Internet for their election-related information, the web has become a vital tool for all Canadians who value access to information as a means of supporting an engaged, informed electorate.
For a company like Google, whose mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, civic information has always been a big part of that mission. It’s why we’ve worked on elections projects in over 40 countries since 2007, created a “Know Your Candidates” platform in India to learn about more than 8,000 candidates in the world’s largest democratic election, served up voter information more than 120 million times in Egypt and helped millions of U.S. voters since 2008 access voting information through our Voting Information Project and Civic Information API. It’s why we have made several of Canada’s federal leaders’ debates available on YouTube in real time — a Canadian election “first” — and why we’re working with partners like Elections Canada to make voting information easily accessible on the web and on the smartphone in your pocket.
In the heat of an election, it may be tempting to wonder, as a series of articles in the Post recently did, “What if a single tech giant had the power to control an election with the tweak of its search engine?” (‘Big data meets the popular vote,’ Sept. 21; ‘Big Data may leave the public in the dark,’ Sept. 22). But to be clear, Google has never re-ranked search results on any topic (including elections) to manipulate user sentiment, and the study referenced in these articles has been questioned by statisticians, academics and other news sources like the Guardian. Our focus continues to be on providing a neutral and trusted service to explore content on the web.
Like TV or print before it, the usefulness of the web relies on the presence of good content, which runs the gamut from dispassionate journalism to paid advertising from political parties, to the wonders of user-generated content that forms today’s equivalent of the town square. Since a Google search without great content makes for a poor user experience, we firmly believe that preserving a robust and independent press is crucial for providing the public with reliable, trusted information.
The sources of this content are increasingly varied, even on the web, where today, Canadians can turn to social networks, search engines, mobile apps, online video platforms and specialized news sites in addition to print, radio, TV and even the pamphlets candidates drop off at our doors. Within the context of a digital election, political parties and candidates themselves have begun employing a range of strategies across an even wider range of platforms to reach their audiences and have their ideas heard.
Our goal in being involved with Canada’s election, as Googlers and Canadian voters ourselves, is to ensure that our users — and today’s voters — get the information that they are looking for, so that they can have their questions answered and make an informed decision when they cast their ballot.