By CHRIS PLEASANCE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Google could change the result of the Presidential election based on where it ranks candidates in its search results, a study has shown.

Undecided voters researching election candidates were far more likely to back those who appeared towards the top of a Google search, even if the results were negative, scientists said.

The study by the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, showed that deliberately influencing where candidates fell in search results swung opinion by 12 per cent.

Google search results could decided the result of the 2016 Presidential election, according to a new study which shows voters can be hugely influenced by where a search result appears on a page

That level of swing, especially among undecided voters, could overturn an election result even in cases where one candidate has an overwhelming lead.

Robert Epstein, a psychologist at AIBRT and one of the study’s leads, told Science mag: ‘This is a huge effect. It’s so big that it’s quite dangerous.

I think that it does pose a threat to the legitimacy of the democracy that we have. We desperately need to have a public conversation about the role of these systems in the democratic processes.’

Researchers began their experiment by gathering 120 volunteers from California and making them participate in a mock ballot, based on the 2010 Australian election.

Each volunteer was given access to a fake search engine, Kadoodle, and was asked to research each candidate before making their decision.

Each of the volunteers was then shown a search results page with 30 real-life news articles, 15 of which related to one candidate Julian Gillard, and 15 which related to her opponent tony Abbot.

For a third of the group, their search results favored Gillard, another third favored Abbot, and a third were shown a randomly generated list.

When compared with the random ground, researchers found that those who were shown the biased results were 48 per cent more likely to vote for the candidate at the top of the search list.

Worryingly, this trend held true even if they realized they were being manipulated, as they assumed the search engine had preferred one candidate to the other for a reason.

Researchers then repeated the experiment during a real-life election in India in 2014, taking 2,150 undecided voters and putting them through the same process.

Before repeating the experiment, Epstein had suggested that the swing could be as low as 1 or 2 per cent, due to the voters being more familiar with the candidates, and therefore less likely to be swayed by what they read.

In fact, voters who were shown biased results were on average 12 per cent more likely to vote for that candidate.

In America, where around 80 per cent of people have access to the internet, the study showed Google searches could overturn any election result where the margin was 2 per cent or less, if at least 10 per cent of voters were undecided ahead of polling day

In terms of the Presidential election, around 80 per cent of voters have access the internet

Assuming that just 10 per cent of those are undecided ahead of polling day, skewing search results in favor of one candidate or another could overturn any margin of 2 per cent or less.

For example, if Google had existed in 1960, skewing search results in favor of Nixon would have meant he triumphed over John Kennedy, while Nixon himself would have lost out in 1968 to Hubert Humphrey.

Meanwhile the 1976 race between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford would likely have needed to be re-run, and George W Bush would have come very close to losing his 2004 clash with John Kerry.

The effect become even more profound when you consider that the general election is actually 50 separate elections, and the overall result is decided by just a handful of swing state which often operate on razor-thin margins.

A swing of two or three per cent in states such as New Hampshire, Florida, or Iowa could shift the balance of power hugely overall.

While Epstein says there is no evidence to suggest that Google has been deliberately tampering with search results around elections, it’s search algorithm means the tech giant doesn’t have to.

The algorithm, the code which determines how search results appear, already accounts for things such as ‘relevance’ and ‘credibility’, meaning any search will have an inherent bias to it, even if that bias has not been deliberately constructed.

Epstein added: ‘Without any intervention by anyone working at Google, it means that Google’s algorithm has been determining the outcome of close elections around the world.’

Source: Mail Online