Predicting Election Results With Google

destinyland writes "Google announced they've searched for clues about the upcoming US election using their internal tools (as well as its 'Insights for Search' tool, which compares search volume patterns for different regions and timeframes.) 'Looking at the most popular searches on Google News in October, the issues that stand out are the economy,' their official blog reported, adding, 'we continue to see many searches for terms like unemployment and foreclosures, as well as immigration and health care.' But one technology reporter also notes almost perfect correspondence between some candidate's predicted vote totals from FiveThirtyEight and their current search volume on Google, with only a small margin of error for other candidates. 'Oddly enough, the race with a clear link between web interest and expected voting is the unusual three-way contest [in Florida], where the breakdown between candidates should if anything be less clear-cut and predictable.' And Google adds that also they're seeing national interest in one California proposition — which would legalize marijuana."

Comments

Re:Prop 19

[RazorSharp]

What is "prop 19" - it is nowhere on my state's ballot. I suppose this is a micro version of all the non-USA people complaining Slashdot is too USA centric talks. You are too whatever-state-you're-in centric.

Not really. Prop 19 refers specifically to California's prop 19, which would legalize marijuana, but like the article points out, it's received quite a bit of national attention. I know plenty of people who don't know any of the propositions on my own state's ballot but they've heard of prop 19. If you haven't heard of prop 19 it probably has less to do with not being from California than it has to do with you not smoking pot.

btw, it annoys me to no end when some foreigner complains on Slashdot about how some comment is USA-centric. Sure, the internet is international, but when I go to a British website I don't complain about how it's UK-centric. I love that so many foreigners post on Slashdot; I've learned quite a bit from them, especially when the story is about their home country; but don't get annoyed when comments on a political story use the pronoun 'we' to refer to 'the American people.'