Fact Check: Google Falsely Highlighted Harris Bias on Election Night

Conservatives and social media commentators began making claims on election night that Google had predicted a pro-Kamala Harris bias and claimed results had been mapped in which voters cast their vote for her but not for Trump could give.

Photos were also shared of the search engine's homepage, seemingly emblazoned with a giant photo of Harris, while Vice President and former President Donald Trump sat out the results overnight.

However, the veracity of these claims was directly disputed by Google after SpaceX founder and Trump ally Elon Musk began sharing them on X, formerly Twitter.

The claim

In a post by the user Doge Designer

“Google is the largest corporate donor to the Democratic Party.”

The post included a video of someone searching “Where can I vote for Harris” and returned a map result. The same search query for Donald Trump did not show any map results.

Elon Musk replied to the post: “Do others see this too?” His reply was seen 42.8 million times.

Another post from a parody account owned by Tusli Gabbard showed what appeared to be an image of Kamala Harris on the Google homepage.

“Do you think Google is interfering with the election in favor of Kamala Harris?” the user wrote.

“Yes or no?”

The facts

Although the Google Map result was real, there is no evidence that Google intentionally manipulated the results to show where to vote for Harris. The company said the result was due to a similar place name. There is also no evidence that the search engine projected a giant photo of Harris on its search page.

In a response post sent by the Google communications team

“The 'Where to Vote?' Panel triggers some specific searches since Harris is also the name of a county in Texas,” the post reads.

“Also happens with “Vance” because it’s also the name of a county. The solution is imminent. Note that very few people actually search for polling places this way.”

The same account later posted a message saying the issue had been resolved.

As for the homepage image, aside from changing the doodle image to recognize famous people and important dates, Google's homepage hasn't changed its signature white background since 1988, as this recently compiled homepage gallery shows.

The homepage image featuring Harris appears to have been created by AI, with clear signs of AI text generation next to the image itself and in the search bar.

The verdict

INCORRECT.

There is no evidence that Google search results were biased. Google, which says it corrected the search results, said the cause was due to the search engine returning results for place names and pointed out that a similar result occurred when searching for JD Vance.

The image of Harris on the homepage appears to have been AI-generated.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's fact checking team