[EM] Web search interest

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

I was playing with Google Trends the other day, and tried to give it
some election method terms, eventually ending up on this:

https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=instant%20runoff,approval%20voting,condorcet%20method,alternative%20vote,borda%20count

IRV, Approval, and the UK phrasing of IRV (Alternative Vote) all seem to
have spikes in interest around electoral events like the US presidential
elections and the UK parliamentary election.

Oddly, it also seems like people in the UK are more interested in other
voting systems than US ones are, since the activity for alternative vote
is greater than for IRV.

It's hard to see much of a pattern in either "borda count" or "condorcet
method", so those probably aren't as widely known. Perhaps Condorcet
needs a short "X voting" name too :-)

Here's a closer look at Range vs Approval vs IRV:
https://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=approval%20voting,instant%20runoff,range%20voting

Doesn't seem to be too bad. Approval voting has the greatest average
interest, while Range seems to have the tallest spikes.

I'm not sure how useful this information is, but I just thought I'd
mention it :-)