Australian voters spend a lot of their lives online, but how much of that activity will be reflected by their choices on polling day?
A political expert has warned that online search trends and social media activity were not reliable indicators of how the federal election would play out.
Latest Google Trends data for the Australian federal election showed the Labor Party made up 35 per cent of search interest in political parties over the past week, followed by the United Australia Party at 22 per cent and the Liberal Party at 14 per cent.
When it came to search interest in political leaders over the past week in Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison claimed 57 per cent of searches, compared to just 23 per cent for federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese.
But Charles Sturt University professor in political science Dominic O'Sullivan said those figures were not a useful indication of how people would vote.
"For example, while the ALP has attracted more searches than any other political party in the last little while, many of those searches relate to the recent resignation of the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Michael Gunner.
"It's unlikely that that would have any impact on the federal election positively or negatively, except perhaps in the two NT seats."
COVID-19 a hot topic online
The most searched political issue in Australia over the past week, according to Google data, was COVID-19, which Professor O'Sullivan suggested was an online trend that political candidates should instead be taking note of.
"They are things that parties should take notice of because they do give a sense of what people are interested in and they do tend to match up with what polling tells us about the issues of importance and COVID, not surprisingly, is one of them.
"However, the fact that people are searching for COVID-19 and health policy more broadly doesn't tell us what they're thinking."
Professor O'Sullivan said social media could also be an unreliable indicator of political sentiment.
He said it was an important place for local candidates to engage with their communities and to advertise but it also allowed for the creation of an "echo chamber".
"When we read our Twitter feeds, we are just getting fed back to us our own thinking because of the kinds of people we are inclined to follow," Professor O'Sullivan said.
"You might get a sense of public mood but it's a narrow sense of the public whose views you are receiving."
Google data also showed searches related to postal voting have hit an all-time high during this election.
