Predicting the Results of the 2019 Indonesian Presidential Election with Google Trends: Analysis of Accuracy, Precision, and Its Opportunity

In electoral competitions, voter behavior research is conducted to develop effective campaign strategies, but survey methods tend to be expensive. By contrast, in the internet era where political campaigns evolve by using digital data and channels, Google Trends offers free services that display search interest indexes for certain keywords and topics measured through search volumes on Google search engines over a period of time and certain areas. Thus, Google Trends could be a tool that increases the efficiency of voter behavior research. By using the election real count data released by the General Election Commission on May 21, 2019, this study conducted an accuracy and precision analysis of the Google Trends topic query index that represented presidential candidate number 01 and number 02 in predicting the real count of the two candidates’ votes. The analysis indicated that using Google Trends as a tool to predict the results of the 2019 Indonesian Presidential Election produced imprecise results. However, Google Trends could better predict election outcomes by adding features for sentiment analysis and a more representative understanding of users’ search activity