2011 Spanish General Election

2011 Spanish General Elections

2012, July 6 M. Luz Congosto / Pablo Aragón 1

SUMMARY

Twitter on Election campaign

Status of art on Electoral prediction

Case study: 2011 Spanish General Election

Conclusions / Findings2012, July 6 M. Luz Congosto / Pablo Aragón 2

Twitter on Election campaign


Comunication Opinion Sensor

Data Mining Prediction

Status of art on Electoral prediction

(Tumasjan, 2010) 2009 German Elections. Method count mentions 1,65% MAE (Mean Absolute Error)

(Jungherr, 2011) 2009 German Elections (Conover D. , 2010) 2010 US Elections (Gayo-Avello D. , 2011) 2008 US elections (Tjong, 2012) 2011 Dutch Elections (Skoric, 2012) 2011 Singapur 2011 (Bermingham et al., 2011) 2011 IIreland Elections (Panagiotis, 2011) 2010 US Elections



Methodology

Twitter as a communication channel

Twitter as an opinion sensor

Twitter as a connection net

Twitter as a source of prediction 2012, July 6 M. Luz Congosto / Pablo Aragón 5


Methodology– Dataset 1: Monitored tweets with mentions of national parties

from 08/10/11 to 22/11/11 using Twitter streaming API from Carlos III University getting 2,973,110 tweets from 441,795 unique users

– Dataset 2: Stored tweets with mentions of political parties represented in Parliament from 9-10-2011 to 24-11-2011 using a routing process for downloading some users' timeline and Twitter streaming API from Fundació Barcelona Media getting 2,279,250 tweets from 442,014 unique users


Twitter as a communication channelCandidate vs. Party


Rajoy

RubalcabaCayoLara

PSOE PP

UpyD Equo

Treemap of followers before the campaing (Dataset-1)


Accumulated of tweets publish on campaign (Dataset-1)

Activity of campaign accounts on Twitter



Accumulated of new followers on campaign(Dataset-1)

Getting new followers



Timeline (Dataset-1)

Correlation new followers / unique mentions

Twitter as communication channel

Correlation by day (Dataset-1)


Tweets and users by day on campaign (Dataset-1)

Citizen Participation



Valence by day of campaign (Dataset-2)

Emotionality (valence)



Dominance by day on campaign (Dataset-2)

Emotionality (dominance)



Treemap of mentions of Web sites on campaign (Dataset-1)Inteactive image: http://barriblog.com/taller/javascript/protovis/sites_20N.html

Spread links


Política.El País

El País

Público

El mundo

EuropaPress

ABC

http://barriblog.com/taller/javascript/protovis/sites_20N.html


Mapa of RTs between politicians on campaign (Dataset-2)

User Communities

Twitter as a connection net


Mentions count on campaign (Dataset-1)

Mentions vs. Results

Twitter as a source of prediction

Total mentions (name + @user + #hashtag) MAE=1,66%


Users with more than three polarity RTs or #hashtags on campaign (Dataset-1)

Political Polarity vs. Results


Total users MAE: 5,00%


Political Polarity vs. Results


Men(61,38%) MAE: 6,49% Women (38,62%) MAE: 3,88%

Users with more than three polarity RTs or #hashtags on campaign (Dataset-1)

Conclusions / Findings

With measurements based on the mentions count we have got a good result, however:

The results depend on many factors such as the social-cultural environment in the elections, the period of the sample, campaign events, the collection of data on Twitter, the parties analyzed and calculation methodThe validation of this method of forecasting requires systemization of steps and checking of other elections


Conclusions / Findings

With the measurements based on Political polarity we have got worse results, we’ll have to bear this in mind to improve the algorithms: 1.Demographics: Twitter users are young and highly educated.

2.Hidden opinion: Not all users show their political opinions

3.Over opinion: Some parties supporters are very actives

4.Entity vs. People: It’s difficult to distinguish an entity from a person on Twitter

5.Anonymous vs. “Real Identity”: users with a real identity are more likely to have a hidden opinion

6.Men vs. Women: There is a gender difference. Men are likely to hide their opinion or to over opinion than women2012, July 6 M. Luz Congosto / Pablo Aragón 20

Technology

2011 Spanish General Election