Stock Up on US Elections Info with Google's New Portal

The US is gearing up for an election year, with all the spectacle that it entails. As the last presidential elections in the US clearly showed, people will be turning to the web for information and context, more so than ever.

Barack Obama owes a lot to the online campaign which presented him as a candidate open to technology and to the younger generations. You can bet a lot more candidates are betting on the web this year and that no one will be ignoring the medium.

"There’s no question that the Internet is set to deliver more political information, opinion and news than any other medium throughout the 2012 U.S. elections," Google explains.

"The web offers candidate and issue info to voters; networking and fundraising platforms for campaigns; and research and productivity tools for journalists," it says.

To help everyone make more informed decisions, Google has launched a new portal dedicated to the 2012 elections. The new site aims to both inform and also be an avenue of discussion around election issues.

"Today, just in time for the Iowa Caucuses, we’re launching google.com/elections, an election hub where citizens can study, watch, discuss, learn about, participate in and perhaps even make an impact on the digital campaign trail as it blazes forward to Tuesday, November 6, 2012," Google announced.

The site aggregates news related to the elections and the candidates from various sources online. It also collects articles around the main issues discussed by the candidates.

Finally, based on search trends, Google News mentions and YouTube views, there's an overview in the interest around each of the candidates.

There are also links to other Google sites that could prove useful, like the Google Politics & Elections Google+ page, the YouTube Politics channel and so on. It's a good place to find news stories around the elections, but doesn't offer that much more functionality besides that.