Search bias still swung real Indian election votes by 8 to 11 percent.

Evidence

Of course, this is all hypothetical. But here’s where things get really interesting: the researchers subsequently repeated their experiment during the high-stakes 2014 national Lok Sabha election in India. The process was the same as before: undecided voters were recruited and asked to use the fake Kadoodle search engine to learn more about one of the three main candidates. Their results proved consistent, this time during a real election: following the web search, votes for candidates that the biased search favoured increased between 8.3 and 10.7 per cent. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 398

Categorization

• QUESTION: Would such a swing actually flip a national election outcome, or does the margin usually exceed it?