Butler on Romney’s Candidacy and Google Searches for the term “Mormon” (guest post at the Monkey Cage)

Dan Butler, with Don Green (Columbia University), wrote a guest blog post on the Monkey Cage blog about the pedagogic function of politics: “the nomination of a presidential candidate with a Mormon religious background has prompted vast numbers of Americans to seek out information about this religion and its adherents.” Butler and Green, using Google Trends, present the volume of weekly searches in the United States for the terms “Mormon” and “Romney” from 2004 to the present, showing that as Election Day nears, residents of states holding elections become more likely to search for “Romney” and for “Mormon.