You probably turn to the web to get information about an election before casting your vote—and you want to get to the important stuff quickly, like learning more about your candidates and understanding how to cast your ballot. To help you find the information you need about the European Parliamentary elections, we’ve introduced a set of useful features across Search in the European Union.
Helping EU citizens find election information in Search
When you search for instructions for how to vote in your country, you now see those details right on the results page. We source this data directly fromthe European Parliament to ensure you get trusted information.
Example of voting requirements that appear in Search
New ways for candidates and parties to reach voters
Supporting the electoral process also means helping voters learn more about their choices in the elections by providing accurate information about candidates, political parties, and their key priorities. The German Press Agency (dpa) provides us with information from electoral commissions in each EU country on candidates and parties running in the elections. This information appears within Knowledge Panels—dedicated spaces with key information about those parties and politicians when you search for their names.
Candidates who claim their Knowledge Panels have been able to submit a brief statement outlining their electoral platform, a set of top three policy priorities, and links to relevant social media profiles. All is visible right inside the Knowledge Panel in the local language of the candidate. Political parties running in the EU elections are also able to claim ownership of their panels and use Posts on Google to provide updates in the form of videos, text, or event listings, again available right on Search.
Bringing more transparency to election advertising online
To help people better understand the election ads they see online, earlier this year we outlined a new process to verify advertisers for the EU Parliamentary elections. These verified election ads also incorporate a clear “paid for by” disclosure. We recently launched our EU political advertising transparency report, which includes a library of election ads that appear across Google, YouTube and and partner properties. We’ve made this data downloadable, so researchers and journalists can easily use and analyze the content.
With these tools, we hope that it will be easier to get the information you need in order to vote in the EU elections.
