We used this opportunity to showcase Google’s relevance in the everyday lives of Taiwanese people by providing them with tools that matter in the moment. With our 2016 Taiwan Presidential Elections campaign and portal we were able to facilitate citizen participation and empowered them through information, be it through Search, Trends, YouTube, Google+, News, and Hangouts.

With a special #AsktheCandidate gadget on the Google Election site, we invited voters to submit questions directly to Presidential candidates across 15 national topics. After clicking the “I want to ask” button, users could enter their query under more than a dozen categories, including education, economy, labor, and health and welfare. Other users could like the question and share it on social networks. The most popular questions were answered directly by candidates on our election site (via text), and some of them were chosen as debate questions in the televised Presidential debates.

The site launched in October, six weeks ahead of the official start to the presidential campaign. It featured:

1. Homepage - featuring candidates’ profile, manifesto, trends, social networks, schedule and latest election news via YouTube, Google News and Google+. Also, the homepage switched to real-time poll results and live open ballot on Election Day.

2. #AsktheCandidate - inviting voters to submit questions directly to Presidential candidates across 15 national topics. The most popular questions were answered directly by candidates on our election site and some of them were chosen as debate questions in the televised Presidential Dates.

3. Trends - providing “Google Score”, a measure of candidates search activity on Google and YouTube. Infographics charting what issues are emerging across the country, and search trends tracked the various candidates with data based on Search insights and Trends.

18.8M eligible voters reached

252 news stories generated

2.1M visits, 1.7M unique users, 3M pageviews on Google Elections portal

11 questions chosen exclusively from #AsktheCandidate on the Google Elections portal for Presidential Debate series; ?6,5?00 questions submitted with 220,000 votes?

1.2M live views of Presidential Debates on YouTube

3.7M live views/ 1.1M watch hours of live poll results on YouTube on Election Day

1M voter engagement via Now Cards on Election Day (88% like rate)

900M impressions of online ads