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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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
I did, in fact, do some research. :)
Had it been one article, I could buy that, but we're talking _years_ worth of racist venom in his newsletter. There wasn't a flood, but there was a steady enough stream that even the most laissez faire (rim shot) editor should have noticed it.
And something from Anti War Radio and Prison Planet? Come on, there's got to be better material in his defense out there. At the risk of engaging in the ad hominem fallacy, that station is largely populated by complete lunatics and 9/11 conspiracy theorists (but I repeat myself). I wouldn't trust them to tell me the time of day, much less balance out years of racist vitriol under Ron Paul's banner.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
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.
Yeah, your feedback made me realize that I was being unclear, so I added a "disclaimer", preceded by the word "Update:", to ensure that nobody actually takes this as statistically valid. Sure, you can't conclude anything about this year's race based on my article. But my entire point with this is to show people that there's this tool out there, that can provide a lot of useful information to candidates, which they don't seem to be using. I'm not trying to push any kind of agenda or act a**holish.
Loose lips lose spit.
Let's recap:
/. Nobody here RTFA," I was making a generalization. Any broad, sweeping statement, such as those beginning with 'nobody', should automatically be presumed a generalization, a statement clearly false at the surface, but based on some nugget of information. It's painfully clear than many /. commenters do not RTFA. Thus, the generalization. I didn't point you out as one who failed this. You assumed this simply because I wrote my comment in reply to yours. It seemed a good place at the time, but your emotional instability prove me wrong.
You read the article. Good for you.
In my statement,"Oh, wait, this is
I'm guessing you're not familiar with the concept of 'lies, damn lies, and statistics.' Stats can be made to say just about anything. Like a computer, garbage in, garbage out. I don't say this to insult the author. I think he did a wonderful job. I'm saying the average person should be able to understand the limits of stats.
I've reread the article and I'm quite satisfied that he stated things clearly enough for an average high school grad who's primary language is English, or who's English education has caught up to such a level, would understand the limits of this initial research even before the update and the added note at the bottom. (But, for those not up to the task, I'm glad he added those updates. English is but one of many languages in the wonderfully varied world.)
So you can read and use a computer. Considering what I've seen where I work, I have to say that doesn't take much. But I don't make any assumptions about you or your abilities. What causes me to think lowly of you is your rude, anti-social behavior. OK, so you didn't understand what I wrote and took offense, then wrote about it. Cool. Your verbiage, however, leaves a bit to be desired. I made no offense to you, but you fire vulgarities at me? Way to make a point! Just how daddy taught you to win friends and influence enemies, eh? Worse still, the author of the article did nothing to you, said nothing to you, and you toss such foulness at him? Why? What ever happened to you that made you this rude, semi-literate fool, you need to get over it and get on with your life.
Cheers
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
Dark Reflection
The correct thing to do in that case would be to include the results and explain that certain factors (such as higher popularity on the internet) can lead to the results being incorrect. Not to pretend that a candidate who fared better than two of the five republicans they DID show never existed.
The laws of probability forbid it!
Cheers, Fuck me.
Because it's easy to predict the past via cherry picking. It's hard, if not impossible, to predict the future.
Exactly! Sheesh :D
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
I only saw one newsletter, and it pretty much said exactly what the fucking statistics say. That blacks are more likely to commit crime or be incarcerated than whites. Show me the statistics where that isn't true. And don't try the 'it isnt blacks its poor people' because blacks have a habit (this isnt racism but #truth, you can go listen to bill cosby and chris rock talk about the black community sometime) of keeping themselves down, so they can perpetuate the whole 'the white man keeps us down' routine. Whether it's conscious or not I don't know, but it's a fact that they do it. Everytime a black guy gets beat up by the cops, or has anything happen to them, it's a racial motivated attack even though they always leave out the part that they tried to run the cops over (sean bell) or attacked the cops and were high on pcp (king). You don't hear about that sort of thing happening to whites because we don't perpetuate the culture of fighting the man/government/whitey. When a white guy gets beat up by the cops, we all stand back and laugh cause we know he probably deserved it.
Or, at least, that's what you *think*. Certainly Diebold has figured this out already, and realized they can save a ton of money on actual programming by just collecting election results from search engine statistics. ;-)
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.