Using Google Trends To Predict John McCain's Running Mate

As stated here, Google Trends correctly predicted Joe Biden's selection as Barack Obama's running mate, so now it's time to test if Google Trends can predict John McCain's running mate. Marc Ambinder, who doubtlessly knows way more about politics than me, seems to be considering four potential people: Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, Joe Lieberman, and Meg Whitman. Since "Whitman" is a fairly common name (there's Walt Whitman and Whitman College, for example), this time I'll use both first and last names. Here's what Google Trends says:


As of right now, Mitt Romney would be the predicted pick (using the same method that correctly predicted Joe Biden for Obama). But Marc Ambinder, who thinks the pick will be Whitman, is pretty influential and there already seems to be some buzz building for her, so it'll be interesting to see how this graph changes over the next couple of days.