Why vote for Andrew Scheer? It’s a question Canadians are asking — at least, asking Google.

In advance of Monday evening’s federal leaders debate, the Star took a look at what Canadians want to know about the federal election, the leaders and their platforms based on Google searches.

“This Google Trends Data set is an aggregated look at the questions and queries about the Canadian federal election that are rising in popularity, relative to the usual volume of search activity,” says Google spokesperson Nicole Bell. “It allows us to measure interest in a particular topic, in this case, over the past seven days in Canada.”

It’s impossible to know the intent behind the searches — but looking at the data does offer some insight into what is top of mind for Canadian voters.

When it comes to interest in specific parties, search trends over the past seven days (Sept. 27 to Oct. 4) shows the Green party leading with 36 per cent of Google searches about a federal party. The Conservatives follow with 26 per cent of searches, while the Liberals have 18 per cent of search traffic.

While Google wasn’t able to provide the Star with exact search phrases, data provided for the past week shows that Canadians have been interested in which party offers a platform on climate change — but they’re specifically interested in what the NDP platform looks like.

Surprisingly, the Green party receives the least amount of search queries related to “climate change.”

Similarly, data related to “taxes” shows that the NDP is again the most Googled party, followed by the Conservatives.

On leaders that are “trustworthy” or “honest,” Canadians search first for Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, before searching for Scheer and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. People’s party Leader Maxime Bernier is the least searched candidate in terms of honesty.

When it comes to how much “experience” the party leaders have, Trudeau finds himself the most searched, followed by Scheer and Green party Leader Elizabeth May.

But “why vote” for a particular party? Canadians are asking that most often about the NDP, and then the Conservatives. There are fewer searches for the Green party or the Liberals, with the People’s party the least searched in this category.

However, when it comes to being swayed to vote for a party leader, Canadians are Googling “why vote” Scheer most often. Trudeau follows as the second most-searched name, with Bernier again being the least searched.

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Meanwhile, the NDP finds themselves the least-searched party this week — gaining a mere 1 per cent of search traffic. The party finds themselves Googled less frequently than either the People’s party (11 per cent) and the Bloc Québécois (8 per cent).

If one looks at data about the party leaders themselves, Trudeau is leading the way in search traffic, capturing almost half of all leader searches at 47 per cent. Scheer follows at 28 per cent, while Singh comes in at 14 per cent, despite few searches being for the NDP.

And, in spite of frequent searches for the Green party, May receives only 4 per cent of search traffic when compared against the other leaders. She follows slightly behind Bernier.

Bloc leader Blanchet received only 1 per cent of party leader search traffic over the past week.

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