Did you know that when Oprah Winfrey joined Barack Obama on the campaign trail last week, his Yahoo! Buzz rating (based on the volume of people who searched for variations of his name) shot up by more than 40 percent? Or that a much wider margin of voters are literally putting their money on Giuliani as the Republican candidate than are supporting him in the polls?

That’s the kind of insight we thought Yahoo! users would find interesting when evaluating this year’s election. It’s why we launched the “political dashboard,” a site that offers some interesting trends of the moment, as well as a state-by-state and candidate-by-candidate data analysis to give even the most hardcore political junkies their campaign fix.

It’s a part of our Election 2008 news site, and gives you a comparative snapshot of the most important campaign data, ranging from aggregate poll data, fundraising information, and even “prediction market” statistics from Intrade (an Irish-based website that uses a stock market-like approach to let users predict the election’s outcome). The dashboard gives a national overview, as well as a state-by-state analysis of both who’s winning and who’s voting. And it’s all updated daily. This type of analysis allows you to track for yourself who’s rising (or falling) as the polls, and ultimately the votes, come in. For now, it’s focused on the presidential candidates, but we also plan to add in local election data as those races heat up in the states.

Of course, we’ve also included the Yahoo! Buzz metrics, which may be the most interesting data point in our minds. This is the first time search data has been presented alongside traditional campaign metrics — something no other major news site can offer.

Check it out for yourself, and let us know what you think.

Alan Warms
General Manager, Yahoo! News