Twitter May Have Predicted the Election • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter May Have Predicted the Election

#21

Post by dzdt » Sun, Dec 18, 2016, 9:08 PM UTC

artursapek wrote: post #5

AznHisoka wrote: post #3

actually Google Trends predicted it: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=vote%20for%20hillary... it predicted obama as well in 2012 https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=vote%20for%20romney,...

Interesting how Hillary is the only one who was referred to by first name. "Vote for Clinton" didn't register as much as "Vote for Hillary"

I have noticed there is a strong bias that women are more often referred to by their first name compared to men in the same position. For example in discussing college professors, a single-word identifier for a male professor is most often their last name; for a woman it is much more often their first name. Keep your ears open -- you will hear it!

Re: Twitter May Have Predicted the Election

#22

Post by somebodynew » Sun, Dec 18, 2016, 9:12 PM UTC

EdiX wrote: post #11

artursapek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting how Hillary is the only one who was referred to by first name. "Vote for Clinton" didn't register as much as "Vote for Hillary"

My impression is that this was a choice of her campaign (differentiate from Bill Clinton? make her seem friendlier?). Jeb Bush and Bernard Sanders also had campaigns centered around their first names.

I find it odd that you refer to "Bernard" when he's almost universally referred to as Bernie, but simultaneously call John Bush "Jeb". I'm missing whatever the intended meaning of the way you wrote these names was.

Re: Twitter May Have Predicted the Election

#23

Post by greglindahl » Sun, Dec 18, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #3

actually Google Trends predicted it: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=vote%20for%20hillary... it predicted obama as well in 2012 https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=vote%20for%20romney,...

Google Flu Trends "predicted" the flu season, and then in 2013 it "predicted" it incorrectly:

https://www.wired.com/2015/10/can-learn-epic-failure-google-...

For the election, Google Trends isn't showing any data on the US state level, and you might recall that Hillary won the popular vote averaged over the entire US.

Re: Twitter May Have Predicted the Election

#24

Post by ericcumbee » Sun, Dec 18, 2016, 9:29 PM UTC

EdiX wrote: post #11

artursapek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting how Hillary is the only one who was referred to by first name. "Vote for Clinton" didn't register as much as "Vote for Hillary"

My impression is that this was a choice of her campaign (differentiate from Bill Clinton? make her seem friendlier?). Jeb Bush and Bernard Sanders also had campaigns centered around their first names.

you mean Jeb! right?

Re: Twitter May Have Predicted the Election

#25

Post by gumby » Sun, Dec 18, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

One thing that jumped out at me from this brief article was that the use of the term "media influencers" -- they certainly weren't influencers in the conventional sense of being gatekeepers.

Re: Twitter May Have Predicted the Election

#26

Post by anigbrowl » Sun, Dec 18, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #20

Any global predictor that claims to have accurately determined Trump's victory should keep in mind that he lost the popular vote. Only a state-based predictor can be plausibly said to have been able to make such a prediction.

Yeah it really comes down to what you base your hunch on. when I saw the first exit poll saying that many voters had opted for a 'strong leader' I knew it was over even thought he polls hadn't closed anywhere.

I have a great many hunches and some facility with visualization of directed graphs and other analytics, but am not clear on how to scrape and normalize the datasets I need.

Re: Twitter May Have Predicted the Election

#27

Post by th0raway » Sun, Dec 18, 2016, 9:34 PM UTC

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #20

Any global predictor that claims to have accurately determined Trump's victory should keep in mind that he lost the popular vote. Only a state-based predictor can be plausibly said to have been able to make such a prediction.

I've seen one of those predictors. It looked at an honest signal, captured in a way that would be fairly representative of the population at large. Since the data had some location information attached, you could attach every point of signal to a congressional district. The model was simple, comparing the signal per district, and then building an electoral college map. It didn't nail every state, but it wasn't off by much, and gave Trump a slightly smaller victory than he actually had.

I won't mention the signal because I want to keep my job. However I'd be surprised if there weren't at least a dozen companies that have access to some honest signal with such a good sample of the population at large as to be better at predicting the election than any pollster.

Re: Twitter May Have Predicted the Election

#28

Post by luluki » Sun, Dec 18, 2016, 9:42 PM UTC

This makes sense to me. I saw similar things in newspaper comments sections. I have a weird habit of always scrolling to comments sections of news articles. It gives me an interesting snapshot of a huge range of opinions. On political articles, I consistently saw so many comments from Trump supporters, with some consistent threads of opinions (as well as more fringe or extreme ideas) that just weren't being represented strongly enough in the general media. I also of course saw comments from Hillary supporters and Trump haters. Their arguments and thoughts WERE already being represented strongly in the general media - there was not much new that I learned there. Something that Obama hasn't addressed is just how biased our mainstream newspapers and magazines were in the run-up to the election. As someone living in a highly liberal area (and who is not aligned with Trump's politics - before I get criticized to infinity) I felt I gained a lot of understanding for why people were supporting Trump, not from the dozens of mainstream newspaper articles I read each day, but from comments sections. I view that as a media fail. I was the only person of my peer group who was not shocked about Trump's win. I'd also add - the media strategy didn't work. Marginalizing people's voices and points of view - often people who felt marginalized in other ways (economic etc), strengthened their resolve to vote for the person who DID hear them (which was Trump.)

Re: Twitter May Have Predicted the Election

#29

Post by anigbrowl » Sun, Dec 18, 2016, 9:42 PM UTC

How much computing power, work and money is it to produce visualizations like this? I'm handy with cytoscape and DAG concepts but I don't know where to get real time datasets like this, or how to automatically construct them for other forums (eg say I wanted to study the social networks on Reddit or HN). Ideally I'd like to be able to work with something like this interactively although real-time operation isn't too important.

Re: Twitter May Have Predicted the Election

#30

Post by lfam » Sun, Dec 18, 2016, 9:52 PM UTC

th0raway wrote: post #27

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #20

Any global predictor that claims to have accurately determined Trump's victory should keep in mind that he lost the popular vote. Only a state-based predictor can be plausibly said to have been able to make such a prediction.

I've seen one of those predictors. It looked at an honest signal, captured in a way that would be fairly representative of the population at large. Since the data had some location information attached, you could attach every point of signal to a congressional district. The model was simple, comparing the signal per district, and then building an electoral college map. It didn't nail every state, but it wasn't off by…

It's interesting to think about where to find this information.

Big ISPs have access to these "honest" signals on a large scale.