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Examining Presidential Candidates Via Google Trends
Michael Giuffrida writes "Google Trends is a free application produced by Google that shows how often a given keyword is searched for, over time. After seeing how candidates in the 2008 primaries have done in Google Trends in different states, it's clear that this tool can be very useful for campaigns." Read on below for some of the specifics about how these candidates have fared, Google-wise.
"For example, in New Hampshire, in the days leading up to the Jan. 8 primary, Clinton was searched for the most, followed by Obama, followed by Edwards — which was how the primary results turned out. In other words, the candidates most searched for on Google by users in New Hampshire were also the candidates with the most number of votes. This works for many other states as well.
For the first 37 Democratic primaries and caucuses, 32 states had enough data on Google to make a prediction. This method correctly predicted 27 of those 32 sates. Predictions aside, the tool is also useful simply in finding out how popular a candidate is in different states, assuming that the more popular candidates are entered more often as a search term in Google (an assumption that was verified, at least for the Democratic primaries, by the positive association found)."
For the first 37 Democratic primaries and caucuses, 32 states had enough data on Google to make a prediction. This method correctly predicted 27 of those 32 sates. Predictions aside, the tool is also useful simply in finding out how popular a candidate is in different states, assuming that the more popular candidates are entered more often as a search term in Google (an assumption that was verified, at least for the Democratic primaries, by the positive association found)."
Sir, every time you mention bird rights and protection your page rank seams to rocket.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Interesting, but I don't think it's that hard to beat an 84% accuracy rate with traditional methods.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...without actually RTFA:
"For the Republican Primaries, last names could easily be used. Ron Paul was excluded. His last name is too common. Using his full name is not a good solution either, because he had massive popularity on the Internet, becoming a meme of sorts, which did not at all correspond with his actual successes (or lack thereof) in the primaries."
It seems their method does rather poorly when looking at republican primaries. Overall, they comment: "In reality, only about half of the "predictions" before the 2/12 primaries were actually accurate. "
Still, one would expect logically that interest in a candidate is related to their poll numbers. But you need a better way to distinguish between negative interest and positive interest: how many people are searching "Obama AND Wright video" vs "Obama AND race speech"? With a more detailed model they could be on to something.
I came here for a good argument
The sample: folks on the internet.
Who's missing: folks who aren't on the internet; like old farts, poor people and Amish. As far as the old farts are concerned: they are the most well organized and the most vocal political group in this country. I think these charts reflect nothing.
Pretty out of date, who cares about edwards? How 'bout some barack/mccain pilf action? Maybe throw in some hilary filling for the sammich
Only so called "Front runners" get mentioned as usual, the rest get practically censored.
There are still a lot of people without computers/internet/education that won't be using Google, thus you could seriously under-represent the base of a particular candidate. Dewey defeat Truman, anyone?
The author is quick to dismiss using "Obama" and "Hilary" as the indicator terms for fear that Obama's huge online campaign popularity is not representative of the true popularity of the two candiates.
However, he makes no mention of the fact that "Obama" and "Hillary" are the most popularly used terms to refer to the candidates. Almost all candidates are refferred to primarily by their last names. Hilary is a special case where we use her first name because her husband was so recently president.
His use of "Barack" and "Hilary" is about as statistically accurate as using "Barack" and "Rodham". Fortunatly, this inaccuracy is obviously visible in his numbers, because using his first-name method it quickly looks like Edwards might be a write-in candidate to rival them both.
Please slashdot, stop posting braindead stories.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So, in other words, any data that contradicts the hypothesis will be thrown out.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Hey, guys, You're all right. There are serious statistical flaws here. I chose the keywords "hillary" and "barack" and "edwards" because that was the model that showed the best success. If one were actually predicting this live, he or she would soon see that "hillary" and "barack" do produce better results and would switch to those terms, simply because it fits the model better. Every election will have its outliers (Obama, Ron Paul). But hopefully this brief overview will provoke some campaign analysts to actually try to interpret Google Trends results for themselves, using more advanced models.
Good thing someone did compare Ron Paul to everyone else in Google Trends: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iW5kOB1pmg
Libertarian-Anarchism is the Shizzz. But I wouldn't be so harsh on this little "study." He says a bazillion times that its not even legitimate statistics: just something cool that needs investigation. Long Live Ron Paul! Death to the nation-state.
Why include Giuliani and Thompson and not Ron Paul? I would rather see Ron Paul than those other two who Ron Paul consistently beat. He was kicking butt in terms of Google searches.
Most of the time conspiracy theorists sound whacko to me but sometimes they sure sound like they have a little insight most people are not aware of.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Well... I think that you might well need to throw out internet memes for perfectly legitimate reasons. Otherwise, you might get headlines like the following:
"New Google study shows that the majority of tech professionals view the internet as a 'series of tubes'!"
Does this mean that the next President of the United States will be Tila Tequila?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
If Internet search popularity is used as an predictor, then the next US President might well be goatse.
That assessment isn't quite fair. One could make a reasonable argument that the Ron Paul campaign was one that would have biased any polling of this sort, appealing to the type of demographic that would google candidate's names and spend time look up this information. The Paul crowd was different from that which would search McCain or Huckabee, so avoid this distortion, the author left off Paul.
That is to say, Ron Paul was a consuming cult that was able to organize a massive, yet still a niche, support group, look at how his supporters used digg. Same with the case of quantitative analysis of Youtube videos. Paul supporters were generally more technologically educated and consumed, so therefore would be the most likely to create videos and pages.
forget it.
He was probably excluded because he was a fringe candidate* whose supporters engaged in questionable internet tactics designed to undermine serious results from any search engine one cares to study. Of course including him screws up the results. That was his supporters' goal.
*Yes, he was. Get over it. He was a candidate so far to the racist, paleocon fringe that even many libertarians were troubled by him (See, e.g., The Volokh Conspiracy, and I can provide others). He's not a serious candidate now, nor was he ever.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
I just hope that Russians, Chinese and the French will have enough good taste to nuke the remains of the Country Formerly Known as United States of America into oblivion.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
i've been using google trends for several years to see what information people really need as they go about their daily lives.
Global Warming vs. Paris Hilton
Global Warming vs. Iraq
(ignore the bottom chart, it is irrelevant to my study)
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
and George Washington turned out to be the winner.
The asshole who published this now has a disclaimer. So, fuck you in accusing me for not reading the goddamn article.
1. If you have five dollars and Ron Paul has five dollars, Ron Paul has more money than you.
2. There is no 'ctrl' button on Ron Paul's computer. Ron Paul is always in control.
3. Apple pays Ron Paul 99 cents every time he listens to a song.
4. Ron Paul can sneeze with his eyes open.
5. Ron Paul can eat just one Lay's potato chip.
6. Ron Paul is suing Myspace for taking the name of what he calls everything around you.
7. Ron Paul destroyed the periodic table, because he only recognizes the element of surprise.
8. Ron Paul can kill two stones with one bird.
Basically I'm wondering "WTF is this supposed to be measuring?"
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Pray to god that McCain (which means "Son of Cain", as in the bible, Cain, the guy who killed his brother,) is going to go down in glorious defeat and that we'll all be able to deal with reality instead.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I've searched for them both on google before...but it was only to find articles, videos, etc, on all the stupid things these two have done in this race. I'm not voting for either of them...
Loose lips lose spit.
Dark Reflection
Because it's easy to predict the past via cherry picking. It's hard, if not impossible, to predict the future.
Did a quick trend on "science", "mathematics", "biology", "chemistry", all trending steadily downward.
On the other hand, if you look for trends in "games", the trend is steadily upward.
A quick look at long term trends for "science", "mathematics", "biology", "chemistry", "engineering", all trending downward, perhaps with a Y intercept of zero in about the year 2100.
On the other hand, "games" on the increase, with "facebook" showing exponential growth.
Watch as billions of facebook users heat up the planet.