News search engines miss poll showing Trump, Carson beating Hillary

Technology professionals have long criticized the reliability of search engines, and this incident validates their misgivings. News search engines such as Google News, Yahoo News, Bing, and AOL completely failed to spot the December 10 Huffington Post poll showing both Donald Trump and Ben Carson beating Clinton 45 to 40 percent and Rubio topping Clinton 41-40 in the general election. In the poll Hillary ties former Florida governor Jeb Bush at 41-41, and Chris Christie at 40-40. The only major GOP candidate Clinton does beat is Ted Cruz, by two percentage points.

The HuffPo poll the search engines failed to detect also contained some disturbing news for the President. According to the Huffington Post, only 38 percent of Americans approve of Obama's performance as president, and 59 percent disapprove of the way he has performed. His dismal approval ratings mirror Americans' mood about their country, with 74 percent saying America is going in the wrong direction.

Economics plays a big role in Obama's poor approval numbers. According to a Pew Research poll, the middle class has lost ground under the Democrat president. In fact, more and more Americans are falling into what the Census defines as the lower economic class.

Voters usually blame the party in power for poor economic conditions. Couple that with the fact that 54 percent of Americans give Hillary Clinton an unfavorable rating and it is not hard to see why she is trailing many Republicans in the race for the White House.

Trump's numbers will surprise many critics, given the fact that both left-progressive and establishment conservative media sources such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal continue to criticize the candidate's statements on everything from terrorism to immigration. The Huffington Post survey seems to suggest that such criticism not only has no effect on Trump's popularity with voters but in fact solidifies it.

Politicians, voters, and social and political scientists expect search engines such as Google News and Yahoo News to provide all the information they need on candidates and their status in a variety of polls. Yet entering terms such as "hillary," "poll," "trump" and "huffington post" into the Yahoo News or Google News search engines will not produce information on this Huffington Post poll. As far as these search engines are concerned, this particular poll never happened.

As such incidents illustrate, professionals and members wanting accurate and comprehensive information on politics and the economy would be well advised to dig deeply and not rely exclusively on the more established news search engines.

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