Getting The US Election Results From Google, Bing & Yahoo

Who’s winning in today’s US presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney? Who’s ahead for the many House of Representatives and US Senate seats that are up for grabs? Who won in the many state and local elections happening? The major search engines of Google, Bing and Yahoo have you covered with answers.

Bing

At Bing, a search for “election results” will bring up a small box with the latest in the presidential race:

Clicking on the main “Presidential election results” link or the smaller “Election Map” or “State Races” links below the latest count takes you to the Bing Elections 2012 site.

At that site, you can get an overview of the latest count for the presidential race, as that comes in:

You can also drill down to the state level. Just select a state. Then you’ll get detailed information about that state, with the ability to bring up results for any House, Senate and governor races that might be happening:

You can further click on a particular county to get results from that particular area. By default, a county will already be selected when you drill in, which is a bit confusing but easily changed.

Elsewhere on the state pages, results of state ballot issues are shown. Here’s how that looks for California:

Even though a particular county will be selected, for state ballot issues, the full statewide count is shown. Unfortunately, results for local elections don’t appear to be offered.

Yahoo

Yahoo promises that certain words will trigger shortcut boxes similar to Bing’s above with direct answers. As of 6:30pm ET, a search for “election results” wasn’t triggering one. This will probably change as more polls begin reporting.

A search for “kentucky election results” does trigger a box like this:

Clicking on the main link there — as will likely be the case for any shortcut box — takes you the Yahoo Election Control Room, where a map is easily accessible:

Buttons at the top allow you to shift the view to see results by the presidential, House, Senate and gubernatorial races. I like how for the Senate and governor races, you can also see which states actually have contests happening.

Select a state, and you can drill in to see results for the presidential race and and any of the other major contests listed in the “See Also” area:

Unfortunately, unlike Bing, Yahoo’s service doesn’t seem to cover state propositions or local elections.

Google

Google typically has shortcut words that trigger the latest returns within its results similar to Yahoo and Bing. As of 6:50pm ET, a search for “election results” brought up nothing. Ironically, Bing took is taking advantage of this running an ad for its election results:

That changed at 7:00pm ET, when some major state polls closed. A search for “election results” brought this up:

Clicking on the “see all election results” link takes you to Google’s dedicated results site, Google Elections. There, you’ll find the familiar map, with states shaded to show which way they are leaning in the presidential race (red for Mitt Romney; blue for Barack Obama):

Similar to Yahoo, you can toggle between the presidential race, Senate, House and gubernatorial races. I also like how you can zoom in on the map and see how the House seats are going in particular states:

An easier way is just to click on a state in the presidential view for an automatic zoom:

Unfortunately, as with Yahoo but unlike Bing, information on state and local results aren’t shown.

Google also has a great Google Politics & Elections page on Google+ that shares election trends emerging from search, such as — surprise — that “election results” are one of the top rising searches today:

It also shared today that there are more searches for Barack Obama than Mitt Romney today, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything in terms of who might be winning, but it’s another stat:

And my favorite chart, that if any state is likely to vote for a Libertarian candidate, it’s probably Colorado, based on it being the state with the most searches for that party in the past 30 days:

Election Results Maps From Others

Many news sites are also offering election results, of course. Perhaps the best I’ve seen is the New York Times “Big Board” table:

This table is excellent because, at a glance, it tells you how each candidate is doing in the states they were expected to win by a wide margin, a narrow margin and in the middle, the “battleground” states that will decide this election.

Here are some others worth checking out:

• Politico
• NPR Big Board

For more election-related resources, be sure to see this post on our Marketing Land sister-site: The Internet Turns Out For US Election Day 2012: Resources & Info. It covers:

• Foursquare Offers “I’ve Voted” Badge & Real Time Check-In Map
• Facebook Offers Real Time Map Of “America Votes 2012″

It also covers special things that Twitter is doing along, voting booths gone wild, and more.

About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.