Daily Kos

Blog sentiment predicts big Obama win in CA, GA

Tue Feb 05, 2008 at 01:02:21 PM PDT

As long as everybody has a different idea of how things are going to turn out today, I'll throw this in. A "blog sentiment" analysis is predicting a decisive win for Obama. Bigger than predicted by pablano. The big prize, California, seems, by this method, not to be even very close. Collective Intellect is saying the sentiment suggests Obama will carry CA with 58%.  Survey USA may end up going into the dogfood business after this one, if Collective Intellect is right; of course the opposite may hold as well.

Collective Intellect gives GA to Obama with 57%, no surprise there, and calls MA, CO and MO too close to call. Overall, the estimate for the vote is 55% to 45, for Obama; a major leap forward that would probably propel Obama to the nomination.

This sentiment assessment stuff is still pretty new but was pretty good in the Michigan, Iowa and South Carolina dustups. There are a couple of companies that do it, using software that finds mentions of candidates in blogs, then applies all sorts of screens and rules to come up with overall estimates of voter sentiment for the candidates. I think it's like making sausage.
Exactly how they choose which blogs to sample and where these bloggers might be located, I have no clue.

The proof of this sausage will be in the eating. Somehow, I can't see California not going to Obama, but I doubt they've been sampling my work.

Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, polls, blogging, California, Democratic primaries (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions

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