Election Countdown: Here’s what South Africans Want to Know
South Africa is just days away from the 1 November 2021 local government elections and Google search activity shows that interest in the sixth municipal election since 1994, has reached an all-time high.
In September, searches for “voter registration” reached the highest level since November 2008 in South Africa while search interest in “how to register” in the context of elections surged. In the run up to Monday’s election, search interest for candidates doubled in October from the level recorded in August. Searches around “election day” have also been steadily rising: search interest for the topic more than doubled (+110%) in October compared to September, while searches for “November 1st” increased by 480% and searches for “municipal election” increased by 100% in the last seven days.
Below is a round-up of the top election-related search queries generated by South Africans this week.
Search trends information is gleaned from data collated by Google based on what South Africans have been searching for. Google processes more than 40 000 search queries every second. This translates to more than a billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. ‘Top searches’ indicate searches that topped Google’s charts while ‘Most searched’ queries are the most popular terms for the past 15 years, ranked in order by volume of searches.
