If, like me, you find polling numbers oddly fascinating, then you’ll love Google’s Trends feature. It allows you to compare and contrast the frequency by which certain phrases are entered into Google’s search bar. This provides a picture of the relative curiosity about a particular topic among Google users over time.

It is, however, not an exact science. This is because search terms do not necessarily reflect the intention of the user inputting them. For example, if we look at the figures for ‘Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats’ over the last 12 months, we get:

Now, even given that Labour’s in government, it seems rather odd that Google users are so significantly more interested in them than any other party. However, if we look at the searches that are associated with ‘Labour’, we get:

It would therefore seem probable that people googling ‘Labour’ are perhaps more likely to be concerned with giving birth than receiving updates on the glories of faux socialism.

Let’s refine our search a little:

This seems a little more accurate. Interest in all three parties peaked in conference season, and collapsed during Christmas (when, we would hope, the users of Google have better things to do).

One of the trends that’s interesting to note for anyone engaged with politics is that interest in all three parties has decreased over time, which reflects the fact that interest in traditional politics is frequently painted as waning. As a subset of the population, Google users would appear to bear this out, as this chart of searches since 2004 indicates:

I did rather anticipate this. However, what I did not anticipate is the location of the most politically curious people in the UK. Google Trends also ranks search results by the city or town they’re made in. And it turns out that the population of Maidenhead find party politics fascinating.

Neither I nor Maidenhead Lib Dems have any idea why this should be, beyond the fact that Maidenhead is one of the most affluent parts of the country and thus has a substantial number of internet users.

Now, while searches on party names are always going to be inexact, one absolute measure of interest in a party would surely be the level of interest paid to its leader, surely? Not necessarily. The below chart shows the searches for party leaders over the last twelve months.

Despite the fact that David Cameron is hotly tipped to become the next Prime Minister, interest in him has largely been flat, except for two occasions. The first was obviously party conference, but the second was the death of his son. Out of all the stories around David Cameron, none has captured the public’s attention quite like this tragedy.

If we take a look at a more in-depth analysis of interest in Nick Clegg over 2008:

We can see that the events that attracted the most interest in him were both party conferences and his GQ interview – with the GQ interview beating out the September conference by an inch.

What we can take from this is the rather banal conclusion that searches for politicians and political parties is directly tied to (a) the amount of press coverage they receive, and (b) the type of press coverage, with human interest stories generating by far the most interest. This does not necessarily cash out into votes, but it’s always worth bearing in mind. There’s a reason the most effective literature the party produces revolves around making our candidates appear as human as possible.

Adam Bell is the Lib Dem Organiser for Islington.