By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: A new tool launched by Google on Tuesday showed that the party of former prime minister Imran Khan, who is in jail on corruption charges, was the most searched online by potential voters as Pakistan prepares to hold general elections on February 8.
The tool, called Google Trends Pakistan Elections, tracks the online search interest in the major political parties, candidates, and issues related to the upcoming polls in the economically troubled South Asian nation.
According to the data, Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), or Movement for Justice, had 78 percent of the total online searches in the past 14 days, followed by its main rival, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), with 14 percent.
The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which has a strong base in the southern province of Sindh, and the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a religious party that gained prominence after staging protests against blasphemy laws, each had 3 percent of the searches.
Other parties, such as the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), the Karachi-based Muttahida Quami Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and the Awami National Party (ANP), which once ruled the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, had 2 percent of the searches each.
The tool also reveals the top issues and questions that Pakistanis are searching for online, such as the cost of living, foreign policy, education, health, and security.
The search interest in the cost of living reached a 12-year high in Pakistan in 2023, reflecting the economic woes of the country that has been struggling with inflation, debt and unemployment.
Google said that Pakistan was among the top 10 countries searching for foreign policy in 2023, indicating the interest in the country’s relations with its neighbors, especially India and Afghanistan, as well as the United States and China.
The tool allows users to filter the results by city or region, showing the variations in search interest across the country.
Google said that the tool was designed to provide “a snapshot of the online interest in the elections” and to “help people make informed decisions.”
However, the tool does not necessarily reflect the actual voting preferences or intentions of the people, as online searches may be influenced by various factors, such as media coverage, social media trends, curiosity, or misinformation.
The tool also does not capture the offline sentiments of the millions of Pakistanis who do not have access to the internet or use it infrequently.
The online popularity of Khan’s party, for instance, does not guarantee its electoral success, as the former cricket star faces several legal and political hurdles that could hamper his chances of returning to power.
Khan, who became the prime minister in 2018 after leading a campaign against corruption and promising to bring a “new Pakistan,” was ousted in a parliamentary vote in 2022 and subsequently arrested in August 2023 on corruption charges.
He was sentenced to 5 years in prison and fined Rs10 million, a verdict that he has challenged in the high court.
Khan has also been disqualified from contesting the elections or holding any public office for five years by the Election Commission of Pakistan.
Last Saturday, the country’s top court also upheld a decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to revoke the party’s cricket bat symbol, saying it had violated its own constitution and election laws by holding flawed internal elections.
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