According to a recent report, Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi narrowly defeated Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on google trends for the month of August.
Google Trends provides information about the public’s interest in the candidates, including why they are searching about them and where they are searching from.
A comparative analysis of searches about the candidates on Google Trends from Monday, August 1 to Wednesday, August 31, indicated some dynamics that might play out in the February 2023 presidential election.
During the period under review, the search term, Peter Obi, had a higher number of searches than the search terms Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022, the number of searches about Tinubu increased. The increase is related to the campaign management’s statement advising Obi to be cautious with his social media followers.
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Atiku Abubakar, however, had the most searches on August 29, 2022, even though the search phrase throughout the month was mostly Obi and Tinubu.The bulk of the search interests on Obi emanated from the south-south and the south-east region of the country.
In the North, he had a significant percentage of searches in Kogi, Plateau Sokoto, Benue, and Kwara state.
But in Lagos and Ogun, he trailed behind Tinubu, whose search terms recorded 40% and 47% respectively during the period under review.
For Tinubu, the six states in the South-west including Lagos and some states recorded the highest search volume for the former governor of Lagos State.
In the North, searches about Tinubu in Bauchi, Kebbi, Zamfara and Gombe state dwarfed Atiku’s search term.
Tinubu also shared some significant search percentages with Atiku in Nasarawa, Kano and Kaduna state.
Interestingly, in Jigawa state, it seems Atiku is the only candidate in the race as both Tinubu and Obi recorded zero percentage of searches in the state. Atiku also has a higher search percentage in Yobe, Adamawa, Kebbi, Sokoto and Kano state.
His search term also recorded some significant numbers in Borno, Gombe, Kaduna, Ekiti and Kogo states.