Election 2016: Forecast / Turnout and Result: Wikipedia Page Views
Let’s admit it, we all rely on Wikipedia. When you want to know about something or even you want a refresher on a topic, you go to its Wikipedia page. The information is extremely useful and almost always up-to-date. It should come as no surprise then that trends in Wikipedia page views are extremely useful in analyzing levels of interest in a topic.
In a sense Wikipedia page views are similar to Google Search Trends. However, with Google you can mostly determine what people are asking about. With Wikipedia Page Views you know exactly where they are going. So someone searching on Google for “Hillary Clinton” might simply be interested in the election or about some news item concerning her. With Wikipedia, we can determine if that interest ended up learning more about the party (like a view of the “Democratic Party” page), the candidate (“Hillary Clinton” page), her campaign (“Clinton Presidential Campaign 2016” page) or even her slogan (“I’m with Her” page). We can do the same for the Republican candidate and compare the results for each. The core idea is the more views to a specific page means more people are interested in that topic.
Measuring interest in a candidate by looking at page views is fairly straightforward and leverages the power of the internet. This method basically tracks people’s daily actions around a topic. There are no sample sizes, sophisticated poll methodology, or margins of error here. This data includes the hits to Wikipedia pages and effectively measures interest level on a national scale without any filters, adjustments, or black boxes. Instead of random samples of the populace amounting to somewhere around 1,000 people in a poll, we can look at +100,000 daily hits on Trump’s Wikipedia page.
The weakness with Wikipedia Page Views is that there is an element of discovery in addition to pure interest. For instance, an argument can be made that there could be more searches for a less known candidate, in this case Trump as Clinton has been known in the political sphere since at least the early 1990s. This is a strong argument, but as we will see the strength of the Republicans and Trump on Wikipedia appears to transcend this argument due to its consistency.
First, let’s look at how the candidates compare head-on, or comparing the page views for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. This shows the page views for Donald Trump divided by those for Hillary Clinton. A level of 1.0 is parity, anything over that shows strength for Trump.
Chart 1: Wikipedia Page Views for Donald Trump / Hillary Clinton, 1 month moving average
Source: Wikipedia
Page views for Trump far exceed those for Clinton. On this metric, it clearly seems like there is much more interest around Trump’s candidacy. Even making a discount for the fact that Clinton is more well known in the political realm does not seem like it could make up for such a disparity. For example, over the last week, the average number of daily page views for Trump is approximately 75,000 versus 23,000 for Clinton. There simply seems to be more general interest around Trump.
Second, let’s look at page views for their campaigns. So, we will compare page views for Donald Trump Presidential Campaign 2016 / Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign 2016. Again, we see that interest in Trump is much higher.
Chart 2: Wikipedia Page Views for Donald Trump Presidential Campaign 2016 / Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign 2016, 1 month moving average
Source: Wikipedia
Similar to the page views of the candidates as individuals, the page views for the Trump’s campaign well exceed those for Clinton. Even though it has fallen more recently, it has fallen to a level of around 2.0. In other words roughly twice as many people are visiting the Trump Campaign Wikipedia page than those visiting the equivalent for Clinton.
Third, let’s look at their most well-known slogans. For Trump it is “Make America Great Again” and for Clinton it is “I’m with Her”.
Chart 3: Wikipedia Page Views for “Make America Great Again” / “I’m with Her”, 1 month moving average
Source: Wikipedia
The comparison is not even close. On average during the last week, there was over 10 times the number of page views for Trump’s campaign slogan than that for Clinton’s. Even making allowances and discounts, it would difficult to argue against the fact that there seems to be more interest in the Trump campaign.
Fourth, let’s look at the page views for the Republican Party versus the Democratic Party.
Chart 4: Wikipedia Page Views for Republican Party / Democratic Party, 1 month moving average
Source: Wikipedia
The results of this comparison are much tighter. However, the page views for the Republican Party are consistently higher than those for the Democratic Party. The difference is very small in comparison to the other trends but the consistency is impressive. Also, recall that the there are many more registered Democrats than Republicans, so the Republican Party page consistently receiving more page views is still more impressive. Again, more people are showing interest in the Republican Party this election season.
Summarizing, using Wikipedia Page Views as a metric to measure general interest, there appears to be many more people interested in Trump, his candidacy, and the Republican Party this election season. This bodes well for the Republicans going into the general election. Though it is possible that these trends could invert, it does not seem likely so close to the general election as these trends have consistently shown Republican strength during 2016. Also, it is possible, though not likely, that these trends could be produced by a greater curiosity surrounding Trump as his candidacy is highly unusual. If these trends could be explained away due to curiosity, there would likely be more spikes around gaffes and questionable situations, but the pro-Republican trends have dominated fairly consistently on a variety of topics throughout the race. As with most metrics, the difference between scores for Clinton and Trump should narrow as the election gets closer – the real question will be if this narrowing will be enough to offset months of apparent higher interest levels for Trump and the Republicans.