As we move closer towards the Lok Sabha Elections 2014, Google search trends for political leaders in Karnataka over the last 90 days reveals that people from the state are following national political developments more keenly than local events.
The Google search trends reveal that voters from the state have cast aside their interest in regional political leaders temporarily and increasingly focusing on national leaders like Arvind Kejriwal, Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi.
In fact, when the trends are seen from a 365 day perspective, it shows a gradual rise in visibility for Arvind Kajriwal, Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi. While Narendra Modi has constantly been more searched than either of his two key rivals on the national stage, Rahul gandhi?s visibility in search rankings has dipped marginally in comparison to Arvind Kejriwal?s from around the last quarter of 2013.
Comparison between national payers and regional titans
Past one year search trends of Modi ? Rahul ? Kejriwal
As the search trends reveal, the current Chief Minister of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah (from the Congress), B.S.Yeddyurappa of the BJP and H.D. Deve Gowda of JD(S) come nowhere close to showing the same search volumes when compared to Arvind Kejriwal, Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi.
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Perhaps not surprisingly, state politics veterans such as Siddaramaiah, Yeddyurappa and Gowda also lag behind new political entrant Nandan Nilekani. Interestingly, V. Balakrishnan the ex-CFO of Infosys who is now an AAP candidate has also not been able to garner the same interest as his ex-colleague.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Nandan%20Nilekani%2C%20V%20Balakrishnan%2C%20%2Fm%2F0b5464%2C%20%2Fm%2F06r1gc%2C%20%2Fm%2F020sbm&geo=IN-KA&date=today%203-m&cmpt=q
Search trends of political parties also shows that AAP, BJP and Congress are the most searched parties in the state. While AAP remains the most searched among national parties, since January 2014, search trends for the party have shown a marked decline. On the other hand, Congress and BJP are consistently being searched and the search results for BJP are seen to be going up.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=BJP%2C%20AAP%2C%20Congress%2C%20JDS&geo=IN-KA&date=today%203-m&cmpt=q
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