Yahoo Bringing Election Results To Search Results

Tuesday is election day in the U.S. and, by almost all accounts, the presidential race between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney will be tight. No doubt many other races across the country will be equally close, and Yahoo will let searchers track results right in its search results pages. Some of Yahoo’s “direct […]

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yahoo-y-logoTuesday is election day in the U.S. and, by almost all accounts, the presidential race between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney will be tight. No doubt many other races across the country will be equally close, and Yahoo will let searchers track results right in its search results pages.

Some of Yahoo’s “direct display” results (Yahoo has previously called these “shortcuts,” as I recall) are already in place. You can see, for example, some current polling data on searches like [swing state polls] and [2012 presidential polls].

yahoo-prez-polls

As you’d expect, searches related to the presidential race will bring up results starting in the early evening when polls begin to close and ballots are counted.

Yahoo is also planning to show results for congressional races, noteworthy ballot initiatives/propositions and state gubernatorial races. Here’s a screenshot from Yahoo’s announcement showing how U.S. House results will appear tomorrow.

yahoo-elections

I’d expect both Google and Bing to provide election results in their search results pages, too, but neither company has announced any details at the moment as far as I’m aware.

Postscript: In a separate blog post, Yahoo has also announced what it’s calling the Yahoo News Election Control Room — a dashboard that lets users customize content to include the political information that interests them the most.

Postscript 2: See our follow-up post now that results are live, Getting The US Election Results From Google, Bing & Yahoo.

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About the author

Matt McGee
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Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.

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