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President 2012: Politico Teams Up With Facebook in New Method of Election Prediction

Graphic from Politico

Certainly a new way to predict elections.

Politico, the politics-focused media outlet, is teaming up with Facebook to take a look at Facebook users’ opinions of Republican presidential hopefuls.

It’s all happening during the lead-up to the next primary, being held Jan. 21 in South Carolina. Every time a Facebook user posts about a candidate, Facebook’s team will pick it up and determine whether the mention expresses favorable sentiment about the candidate. To do that, they’ll be armed with new software that researchers use to determine opinion from text. They’ll analyze every mention from Thursday until the primary.

In turn, they’ll hand that data over exclusively to Politico, whose journalists will add insight and commentary. The first round of data is already available.

Go and check it out!