

How Google Can Predict Elections - way66
http://pierrevalade.com/post/11321719563/how-google-predicted-the-french-socialist-party

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danvideo
This sounds like one of those phenomenons that suffers when too many people
find out about it.

The more it's written about, tested, and the more people in the disgruntled
minority (or majority) with what appears to be the statistics on a given
Monday --- the less accurate this'll likely be on Tuesday... rest of the time.

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libria
Reminds me of Asimov's "psychohistory". He conceived of a science capable
predicting future events with probabilities but two of its foundational
principles are that 1) the population sample is sufficiently large 2) the
population is unaware that they are being observed or unaware of the
variables/mechanisms used to predict their future.

Part of what made his writing interesting was that this science was very
believable.

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beej71
Those google numbers are 30-day averages, so it's possible to get plenty more
than 100%. Looks like coincidence.

In the US now we have:

    
    
        michele bachmann 14
        herman cain      36
        mitt romney      11
        ron paul         34
        rick perry       33
    

All that said, I will be watching Insights and Trends now to see how it pans
out. It might be coincidence, but it's potentially very interesting
coincidence.

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recusancy
I tried it for the GOP presidential primary.

    
    
      mitt romney	   11
      rick perry	   33
      herman cain	   36
      michele bachmann 14
      ron paul	   34
    

So I guess it's Cain or Perry with Romney not standing a chance?

Also:

    
    
      perry	73
      obama	67
    
      romney  9
      obama	 72
    

In MA:

    
    
      scott brown        0
      elizabeth warren  31

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MatthewPhillips
Seems like selection bias to me. Voters who search for candidates are a subset
of all voters. Plenty of voters (probably a shocking majority) watch the
commercials and that's the extent of their research.

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bdr
Google is getting thought samples from the brains of a billion people. Whether
this particular method is valid or not, I expect they can make such
predictions, and more. Flu trends, elections, real estate by region, box-
office openings, popular conflict ("why are Tutsis so..."), traffic, stock
prices in some cases ("xbox red light", "how to buy krispy kreme stock")...

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Kell
Seems to be a coincidence for me.

If you do it only for Hollande and Aubry, now. The results are the same...
Aubry 29 Hollande 39, difficult to prdict a second turn with more than 30% not
turning up.

We'll see next sunday if it's a coincidence or no.

~~~
bambax
It's very much a coincidence; amongst the "top searches" for "hollande", "la
hollande" comes third.

"la hollande" is the country Netherlands, and has absolutely nothing to do
with the man of the same name.

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swGooF
The results are so close it is almost scary. It does make sense that the most
popular candidate will get the most searches.

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partoa
And pollsters just had their job made easier, until people figure out how to
play it.

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andos
Yes, how?

