Posted on 10/26/2018 6:08:27 AM PDT by Steven Scharf
Portland Press Herald October 25, 2018
Data company predicts Brakey will win U.S. Senate seat – but makes a King-sized mistake
The firm projects winners based on Google searches for candidates.
A global data company is trying to make a splash with a study that predicts the outcome of next month’s U.S. Senate elections based on Google searches for each candidate’s name.
When it comes to Maine’s Senate race, the marketing data firm, SEMrush, makes a bold prediction: that Republican Eric Brakey will win, with 54 percent of the vote.
But SEMrush forgot something important: the incumbent, Sen. Angus King.
King, who is expected to win re-election easily on Nov. 6, is an independent, of course. SEMrush apparently considered only Republicans and Democrats, because the company gives Democrat Zak Ringelstein 46 percent, which leaves exactly 0 percent of the vote for King, a former Maine governor who was first elected to the seat in 2012. SEMrush circulated the report to media outlets Thursday.
Told of the mistake, a spokeswoman for SEMrush said it was “a total oversight” and that the data scientists would update the report soon.
Eric will do well but Angus King is still expected to take it all. the democrat socialist, Zak is going to do about 5 to 10%. We need him to take 20 to 25% in order to really affect the race.
We are using rank choice for our federal races only as our state constitution requires election by plurality as oppose to majority. If any of our three fed races result in the republican winning the first round and losing the final, the results will be challenged.
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