Is there a correlation between web traffic and the results of the Iowa Caucus? Well, maybe.
Yahoo's numbers, but only because the payoff would be higher. Obama was second overall in Yahoo searches, first among Iowa's younger voters, and second among voters over 30. (Though I don't know yet how they know the ages of Iowa searchers – awaiting a phone call on that one.)But Clinton and Edwards were tied for first. No dice for a solid prediction, but Huckabee was a solid third place, edging out Ron Paul. So, that's a close call.
Google Trends said there wasn't enough information available for just the past week or 30 days, so you have to look at searches in Iowa over the past year, which brings up November and December volumes.
In a Republicans on Google Trends, it was a slaughter, with Ron Paul searches dwarfing searches for second place Mike Huckabee and third place Mitt Romney.
Based on the results, you might say site traffic is a more accurate predictor of which candidates will win the primaries than search, so long as the Internet population isn't disproportionately slanted toward one of them, as seems to be the case with Ron Paul.
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