Researcher documents Google's pro-Hillary bias

FPI / September 9, 2019

Google during the 2016 presidential election manipulated its search results in a way that benefited Hillary Clinton to the tune of up to 10.4 million votes, a political researcher — and Clinton supporter — said.

"That level of bias was sufficient, I calculated, to have shifted over time somewhere between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes to Hillary without anyone knowing that this had occurred," Dr. Robert Epstein said during a Sept. 8 interview on Fox News’s “Life, Liberty & Levin”.

The point, Epstein said, “is if there's a bias in them — which means if a search result that's high up on the list, if that takes you to a web page that makes one candidate look better than another — if you're undecided and you're trying to make up your mind, what we've learned is that information posted high in Google search results will shift opinions among undecided people dramatically because people trust Google."

The bias, Epstein emphasized, was not in evidence at other search engines including Bing and Yahoo.

An admitted liberal Democrat, Epstein said he was shocked and dismayed by the reaction from Hillary Clinton, who stated without evidence that his findings had been debunked, and the Mainstream Media which had trumpeted her response. He told host Mark Levin that his peer-reviewed research was "rock solid" and that his professional reputation was untainted.

Asked by Levin how such bias could materialize, Epstein said those searching Google for politically relevant or election-related information would see search suggestions pop up as they type, and also see a number of top searches on the first page of their results. He claimed the alleged bias manifested itself largely within those two areas.

"I looked at politically oriented searches that these people were conducting on Google, Bing and Yahoo. I was able to preserve more than 13,000 searches and 98,000 web pages, and I found very dramatic bias in Google's search results... favoring Hillary Clinton -- whom I supported strongly," Epstein said.

Google’s search suggestions, Epstein said, “have a very, very powerful effect on people” and that the tech giant “alone can shift opinions and votes dramatically and then search results appear below.”

Epstein had on June 16 revealed his findings in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, saying: “In 2016, biased search results generated by Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that gave at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton (whom I supported).”

After learning of Epstein’s study, Trump tweeted: "Report just out! Google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 election! This was put out by a Clinton supporter, not a Trump Supporter! Google should be sued. My victory was even bigger than thought!"

Epstein's report documented similar results for the 2018 elections: "In the weeks leading up to the 2018 election, bias in Google’s search results may have shifted upwards of 78.2 million votes to the candidates of one political party (spread across hundreds of local and regional races). "

Last month, a former engineer at Google detailed how Google is intent on ensuring that Trump does not win a second term.

Google has “very biased people running every level of the company. They have quite a bit of control over the political process. That’s something we should really worry about,” Kevin Cernekee told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on Aug. 2.

Read Epstein’s full testimony before the Senate subcommittee here.  

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