Question of the day
Monday, Aug 20, 2012 - Posted by Rich Miller
* From Chris Cillizza…
In politics, perception often trumps reality. Put another way: What people think they know about a politician, an issue or anything else goes a long way to determining how they feel about it — whether or not their initial perception is based in reality or not.
That perception obsession has lead us to seek out any and every tool that helps us get at how people think about their politics — and each other.
Today we happened upon an awesome map put together by Renee DiResta at her No Upside blog. What DiResta did is simple but revealing. In Google she typed in “Why is [fill in the blank state] so…” and let Google’s autocomplete function, which tracks the most common words typed after “so”, do the rest. She mapped the top four auto-completes for each state. […]
* One of the top four autocomplete terms for Alabama, Missisippi, Georgia and South Carolina is “racist”. It’s the most common autocomplete in Alabama and South Carolina and number two in Mississippi and Georgia.
* In California, Oregon and Washington State, one of the top four terms is “why is [state] so liberal?” That’s also true in Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts.
* The four top Google auto-completes for “Why is Illinois so…” are…
Humid
Corrupt
Flat
Broke
* Methodology…
The data set is Google auto-complete results for “Why is [insert state] so “. I took up to four results per state - one or two states didn’t even have four results - then grouped the results by term. I categorized the terms into buckets: economic, geographic, health, history, political, population, sports, weather, and “culture/sentiment”. The latter was a bit of a catch-all for ‘judgey terms’, ranging from “awesome” to “boring” to “racist.” Sometimes the classification wasn’t immediately obvious; for example, “Why is Alabama so good?” is pretty vague, so I followed the query through to the results, and determined it was most likely sports-related. (“Why is New Jersey so bad?”, however, was not about sports.) Your search results may vary (due to past search history, region, autocomplete results changing due to news events, and other factors). I did run these in both Incognito mode and regular mode, and the vast majority of results were identical. If you’d like the raw data, contact me.
* The Question: What one word immediately comes to your own mind when asked “Why is Illinois so…”?
- wordslinger - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 10:41 am:
whiny
- walkinfool - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 10:44 am:
in denial.
- geronimo - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 10:45 am:
corrupt
- TCB - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 10:48 am:
…..bad at electing leaders
- Anonymice - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 10:49 am:
Illinois
- OneMan - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 10:51 am:
entertaining
- Springfield Dan - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 10:54 am:
unconstitutional
- Oswego Willy - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 10:57 am:
oxymoron
hyperbole
misundererstood?????
Pongee - I couldn’t help it …
- Oswego Willy - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 11:01 am:
lop-sided?
Republican-less
leader-less(?)
desperate
hollow???
- zatoichi - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 11:05 am:
complacent
- Way Way Down Here - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 11:07 am:
long
- Raising Kane - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 11:08 am:
inept
- reformer - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 11:08 am:
regressive
- Oswego Willy - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 11:12 am:
ridiculed?
caricatured
faux
- CircularFiringSquad - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 11:14 am:
home to the dopiest GOPies
Fire,Aim, Ready
- Yosarrian Lives - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 11:22 am:
Humid? Really???
- titan - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 11:34 am:
Are there lots more returns for the Illinois ones (i.e. did Illinois folk vote early and often on these)?
- phocion - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 11:48 am:
dysfunctional
- Oswego Willy - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 11:49 am:
apocalyptic
procrastinating
- Sideliner - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 12:14 pm:
stupid
- Oswego Willy - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 12:16 pm:
confused
confusing
- RNUG - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 12:25 pm:
echo geronimo - corrupt
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 12:28 pm:
Parochial
- Cheswick - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 12:30 pm:
Backwards
- lake county democrat - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 12:42 pm:
great. Come on folks, think how much greatness has to counterbalance the politics for us to stay here!
- Calhoun Native - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 1:04 pm:
acrophobic
- Cincinnatus - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 1:04 pm:
Democratic.
- MrJM - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 1:17 pm:
G☺☹fy.
– MrJM
- Leroy - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 1:29 pm:
broke
- Six Degrees of Separation - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 2:13 pm:
Rusty.
- Anonymous - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 2:36 pm:
Madiganed.
- Tommydanger - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 2:44 pm:
Reproductively skyward.
- Anonymous - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 3:09 pm:
Bi-polar (Ans. If extended westward the Mason-Dixon Line would run about 3.5 miles south of the center of Springfield)
- Boone Logan Square - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 3:22 pm:
monocultured
- Anyone Remember? - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 3:25 pm:
Contrarian
(Ans. Most states elect councilmen, Illinois elects aldermen. Most states have District Attorneys, Illinois has State’s Attorneys. Most states have the Department of Motor Vehicles, Illinois has the Secretary of State’s Office. Most states have their “goo goos” get elected Secretary of State, where they run clean elections, Illinois in the not so distant past elected its biggest crooks Secretary of State where they had nothing to do with running elections. 25 states use the term “patrol” in the title of their statewide law enforcement agency, Illinois uses the term “State Police” … . )
- railrat - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 3:52 pm:
leftcoastish
- Carlos S. - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 4:49 pm:
doomed
- jt - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 4:53 pm:
Cesspool
- Marty - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 5:12 pm:
corrupt
- RightGirl - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 5:54 pm:
Lovely in the fall. (and liberal)
- wordslinger - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 6:33 pm:
–Bi-polar (Ans. If extended westward the Mason-Dixon Line would run about 3.5 miles south of the center of Springfield)–
Dude, it was supposed to be a one-word answer. If it take you the long way around the barn to explain, it ain’t working.
- roadiepig - Monday, Aug 20, 12 @ 9:29 pm:
Chicago-centric