According to a media watchdog, Google has tilted the scale to favor Democratic presidential candidates in the past four election cycles by censoring Republicans.
The Media Research Center report claims 41 instances of election interference by the search engine since 2008.
The MRC released a report accusing Google of leveraging its power and influence to support the electoral success of the most liberal candidates while censoring their opponents.
Google has also faced criticism when its Gemini AI image generator produced historically inaccurate and “woke”-inspired images, including depictions of black Vikings, a female pope, and Native Americans portrayed among the Founding Fathers.
In 2008, the MRC claimed that Google backed then-Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in his Democratic nomination battle against Hillary Clinton.
According to the MRC report, Google engaged in “targeted support for Hillary Clinton for censorship” by suspending accounts of writers critical of Obama during his primary campaign against Clinton.
Four years later, Google, which allegedly favored Obama over Mitt Romney, refused to address a “Google bomb” that tarnished GOP primary candidate Rick Santorum, as per the report.
The MRC study referenced data from Dr. Robert Epstein, who alleged to have conducted dozens of controlled experiments which uncovered the effect of Google’s bias. Epstein testified to Congress that Google's search algorithm had influenced at least 2.5 million votes in favor of Hillary Clinton during her unsuccessful presidential campaign against Donald Trump.
In 2020, the MRC alleged that Google targeted Tulsi Gabbard, the Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii running for her party's presidential nomination, by disabling Gabbard's Ads account when she became the most searched candidate after the first Democratic Party primary debate.
A source close to Google countered the claim, stating that the company's automated systems detected unusual activity due to significant spending changes, aiming to prevent fraud.
The nonprofit further accused Google of suppressing news sources critical of Joe Biden, also alleging that Google’s left-leaning bias impacted the 2022 Georgia Senate race between former football great and Republican Herschel Walker and Democrat Raphael Warnock.
The report suggested that Google's search results favored incumbent Warnock in swing precincts where more undecided voters likely resided.
