Posted on 05/07/2015 1:26:12 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Computer scientists from the University of Warwick are using Twitter to predict the outcome of the UK general election and believe their forecasts could be more accurate than traditional opinion polls.
They are working in collaboration with partners in the Department of Journalism at City University London and the Information Technologies Institute (ITI-CERTH, Greece).
Together, the team is using an algorithm that harvests political tweets, aggregates various features about every party and then injects this information into conventional polling reports, producing a daily prediction of voting share.
With the outcome of the general election in terms of seats more uncertain than ever, this approach will provide crucial insights into how public opinion is developing and what factors might be influencing any changes in support. Early results of the system have already tracked the surge in support for the SNP and the fluctuating fortunes of UKIP.
Details of the data produced so far, as well as commentary on the results and overview of the study, can be found here: www.electionprediction.eu.
Warwick researcher Adam Tsakalidis... who has developed the core of the prediction algorithm, improved the model and tested it again in the Greek election in January, achieving better results than all 31 most recent polls leading to the election, as well as the three exit polls that were announced once the ballots closed.
ITI-CERTH researcher Symeon Papadopoulos noted...
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
7 of the Best Tweets That Sum Up the U.K. Election
http://time.com/3850004/uk-election-tweets/
Talk about your bad sample
Pound could drop to $1.39 on U.K. election uncertainty, says Morgan Stanley
By Carla Mozee
Published: May 5, 2015
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/pound-could-drop-to-139-on-uk-election-uncertainty-says-morgan-stanley-2015-05-05
If the technique became popular, then people will start scamming Twitter with political tweets to bias polls in their favor.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of voters actually Tweet.
I’ll bet it isn’t anywhere near close enough to form an accurate model from.
I’d be just as accurate pulling a guess out of my - - -.
...Dewey Defeats Truman...
LOL
hat?
On more than one level.
I recall from a statistics class that the first telephone sampling poll in a presidential election was way off from reality.
The majority of phones were in the upper income households, ignoring the majority of the population.
I'd say a good number of people eschew twitter that aren't Labour, except for such leftist types as Whedon when twitterites turned on him.
This sample will exclude:
- Just about everyone over 70
- Wide swaths of people over 50
- Anyone too poor to have a Tweet-friendly phone and wireless plan
- Economically productive people who find Twitter a huge waste of time
and countless others
Miliband of Labour ruled out SNP as a partner, which of course means, he’d sell his firstborn to SNP if it means he can become PM.
I came up with the odd idea that the Tories and SNP will be the most likely partnership, regardless of what it does to make heads explode. Labour appears poised to lose all seats to SNP, while the Tories and LD appear to be hanging on to some in Scotland; the SNP and Tories appear to be far apart, but partnership would mean the SNP could bring some taxation autonomy to Scotland, while the Tories would have an alibi for burying Euroskepticism (and UKIP with it). And a two-party coalition would be stronger than a four or five party coalition that will likely be needed without SNP or without a Conservatives-Labour adversarial coalition.
Exit Polls give:
Torys,316
Labour ,239
SNP, 58,
LibDems 10,
UKIP 2
Nothing official yet.
We'll confirm the results with Univac.
If the technique became popular, then people will start scamming Twitter with political tweets to bias polls in their favor.
Kind of like ballots in a Chicago-style election.
More than 2 MILLION of Hillary Clinton’s Twitter followers are fake (shortened title)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3279054/posts
Thanks moose07. IOW, if that holds, DC and the CP could make do with the 10 seats of the LibDems, but might opt for UKIP and the Democratic Union. If he wants to win the next one without foolin’ around, he’d be well served to try that.
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