Slashdot Mirror
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)."
Interesting, but I don't think it's that hard to beat an 84% accuracy rate with traditional methods.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.
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.
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.
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
They're using a candidate's popularity in Google Trends as a measurement of the success of their campaign.
For Ron Paul, his popularity on the internet has nothing to do with his real-life political success - as grandparent poster said, he's an internet meme. You think there's any correlation between "Ron Paul" jokes on forums and genuine interest in his campaign?
Their "hypothesis" for the other candidates Google trends measures the success of their campaign. With Ron Paul, it's measuring something else entirely.
DATABASE WOW WOW
That's the same thought I had. Ron Paul was all over the map from Google Trends, Facebook, MySpace, and even Digg where he still has more support than Obama.
If anything, those trends didn't equate to votes which also means that this article is nothing more than a fluff piece and not to be taken seriously.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
As opposed to one the current candidates that seems to have NO solid issues to base his run for president on?
I'll leave it to you to figure who I'm speaking about.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
So, popularity on Google trends means that a candidate has succeeded in getting his/her message across, or that people are interested in what s/he has to say, or that people like forwarding e-mail jokes about the candidate, or that the candidate has reached some critical mass of Internet meme-ness, or some other undefined level of Internet interest.
In other words, popularity on Google indicates popularity on Google. While I can't argue with the truth of that statement, I can quibble with its usefulness...
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
Here's the ruleset I propose:
If a candidate is equally liked by fanboys AND media, G-trends accurately reflects the public polls. (e.g. BHO)
If a candidate is liked by fanboys but hated by media (i.e. media blackout), G-trends fails to predict global outcome.
Still sounds like they're excluding data to make their hypothesis true. "Using the internet to predict who will win is great, unless the candidate is popular on the internet."
Doesn't that prove the point "Including Ron Paul would have indicated our hypothesis was incorrect, so we excluded him." It means that this method is not a reliable predictor of political success.
On another note, listening to some of Ron Paul's speeches, he doesn't seem to have expected a realistic chance of winning the presidency. His campaign from early on seems to have been focussed on getting his message out and attempting to reform the republican party by packing it with libertarians. I will be interested to see what the effect is on the republican party in 10-20 years.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Feeding the troll (nom nom nom)...
Ron Paul was not a serious candidate at any stage of the campaign
Not even enough to the fact he raised more money debt free and free from PAC than any other GOP candidate and broke 2 fundraising day records?
Giuliani was leading in polls before the primaries
Giuliani had Roger Ailes support in the media, no other candidate had that level of media support. Oprah's support of Obama didn't even match what Murdoch Media did for Guiliani.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
So how do you know that say, searches for "Barack" are any more meaningful than searches for "Ron Paul"? No, the writer had a neat theory and got so attached to it that he discarded a bad data point instead of admitting it didn't work for Ron Paul.
By including Ron Paul but at least being complete and honest, the analysis would have been more worthwhile than what it now is -- a pile of rubbish.
There are such things as statistical outliers and externalities.
They're not talking about "zomg google popularity means they'll win!" They're saying, "Watch for your search graphs to spike after a speech to see if it was effective."
Contrived example: Barack Obama makes a big speech about social security. If, suddenly, the number of searches for "Barack Obama Social Security" spikes, you could conclude that maybe you reached some people, generated some interest.
Now, boys and girls, this is where we stop and think. This would work for Barack Obama because those searches track well with the speech he made. It would not work for Ron Paul given his status as an internet meme. The correlation between Ron Paul searches and events in his campaign is going to be just as weak as correlations between Chuck Norris and (actual) events in his life, or between lolcats and pet food product safety.
I don't know how to make it any clearer. There is no "hypothesis." They have not framed this a statistical H0: Google doesn't control the elections and calculated a p-value. They haven't ignored data that would disprove some part of string theory. They're just saying this:
Tracking search trends can be interesting for candidates. Less so for Ron Paul.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Eventually it will get off the front pages and your blather will seem, as usual, insubstantial. But as soon as words like "candidate" and "president" start to come into your post, your an expert."
What makes you think it stops at the election? It keeps going just as strong after that. Politics is what makes ours (and most other) countries tick...everyone should keep their ears and eyes open to what our elected ones are doing....and constantly try to evaluate them as to their performance, and see if they need to be replaced the next cycle.
There are always elections going on...Representatives, Senators, Governors, local councils, judges, police...DA's...Sheriffs...etc.
It isn't like we only have things up for a vote every 4 years...there are multiple times to vote on a number of offices and issues locally and nationally every year.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
TFA says they deliberately excluded him because he was so popular on the internet and his search results don't correspond to actual votes.
In other words... their examination works great, except when it doesn't. And in that case, we'll just not included that data in the final results.
Wish I could've gotten away with that in college.
Because it's easy to predict the past via cherry picking. It's hard, if not impossible, to predict the future.
I see your point on that one. I think it comes down to he doesn't want to penalize his constituents for voting for him so he sticks earmarks in to get them some of their tax money back. He had difficulty explaining this on Meet the Press, but I think that's what it came down to. He's not 100% perfect, I'll grant you that, but he's the closest thing out there.