Yahoo Scientists Predict Obama Poised to Win 2012 Election
“Yahoo scientists wouldn’t, by any chance, be Media Matters?”
Comment on Yahoo News ‘Obama’ post
Over at Yahoo the post,Obama poised to win 2012 election with 303 electoral votes: The Signal Forecast , a prediction made by Yahoo “scientists” which may or may not come true. What interested us is the over 26,000 comments in nine hours, 99.999% of the comments lambasting Yahoo and the Yahoo ‘scientists’.
[Snip]
“With fewer than nine months to go before Election Day, The Signal predicts that Barack Obama will win the presidential contest with 303 electoral votes to the Republican nominee’s 235.
How do we know? We don’t, of course. Campaigns and candidates evolve, and elections are dynamic events with more variables than can reasonably be distilled in an equation. But the data–based on a prediction engine created by Yahoo! scientists–suggest a second term is likely for the current president. This model does not use polls or prediction markets to directly gauge what voters are thinking. Instead, it forecasts the results of the Electoral College based on past elections, economic indicators, measures of state ideology, presidential approval ratings, incumbency, and a few other politically agnostic factors.”
The Yahoo comment section, a terrific resource to “directly gauge what voters are thinking”.
Posted below, selected comments from Yahoo:
“Since when is Yahoo an authority on anything?”
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“If BO tops 20 million votes in the general election it will give proof to the statement made over 100 years ago by PT Barnum about the stupidity of the American public.”
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“Barack Hussein Obama: You want a real prediction? I bet you $10 trillion I can triple the national debt in 4 years. Don’t worry if you don’t have the money, your kids will pay it.”
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“Way too early to be making any predictions.”
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“Are you kidding? Yahoo cannot predict accurately what happened yesterday.”
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“You people must be either Brain Dead or Drunk!”
You can’t win re-election when you have increased the unemployment rate from
7.8 percent to 8.3 percent.
You can’t win re-election when you have tripled our national debt in less than four years.
You can’t win re-election when your clueless foreign policy has resulted in the
continued pursuit of nuclear weapons by both North Korea and Iran and the
rise to power in Egypt and Libya of regimes who are worse than the ones they
replaced!
In other words you Must Accomplish something in order to be re-elected.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me!
At this time next year Mr Obama will be back home in Chicago!!!”
…
“I am a democrat and believe in the constitution. Ron Paul is the only man that follows it. If we listened more to Ron Paul we wouldn’t be in this mess. He has predicted everything that has happened to our country for the past ten years. If you do not support Ron Paul, it is only because you did not do your own research on him. This guy is honest, decent, and intelligent. Ron Paul is funded strictly through donations from the American people. The others including Obama are backed by Goldman Sachs. They are bought and paid for. How do you think they are true to the American people when they have to answer to these corporations… Wake up people. This is why our country is failing.. Please at least research Ron Paul because you will only regret having to vote for these typical politicians.”
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“Yahoo predicts……LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL……….”
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“Come on, Yahoo. You’re showing your “true colors.” Let’s hope this article ends up in the garbage dump of stupid predictions. Cause if you’re right, the county we once knew as America will be GONE forever. God forbid.”
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“Yeah this is the same Media Propaganda machine that tells you unemployment is
only ~9%, because they stopped counting the People who STOPPED LOOKING FOR WORK as being unemployed
…….”
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“Did the Yahoo magic 8 ball lie yet again?”
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“yahoo pick obama ? Who would have guessed”
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“Oh the Media is asking to subvert our Constitutions, Voting Rights and our political
process …
Time to Boycott the Media and their Propaganda !
Go search for :”545 vs. 300,000,000 People – By Charlie Reese”
Then on U-Tube : “Types of Government explains” (Just up to 3:20 will be good)
Better wake up America or we will go the way of Greece !”
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“Wait a second, Yahoo… Scientists?”
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“The way he has walked on our constitution so far is nothing compared to if he gets a second term, Gives him 4 years to do even more damage with nothing to lose, no re-election to worry about. Yahoo I pray you are wrong.”
[...] DBKP – Death By 1000 Papercuts [...]
Yahoo Scientists???? hahahahahah…the same as the global warming (sucking on Alowishus Gore)scientists???
I am just waiting on my ISP to offer any other browser besides Yahooey.
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Interesting story. Wonder what methodology was used by the investigators?
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The comments at Yahoo demonstrate only that the people are clueless about data mining, modeling, and predictions.
David Rothschild’s work appears to have centered mostly on debiasing transformations of other data, including polls. A couple of his papers are available on the web if you are interested in the techniques used and the improvements in prediction accuracy. The modeling used for the 2012 election prediction is not disclosed. It could be just a linear model with each feature (an example of a feature is “rate of personal income change” by state) debiased against time and other features. They might be using a fancier technique. It will be interesting to learn more.
The main claim is that factors other than the details of the candidate and their positions are the strongest influence on voting patterns. History provides lots of evidence for that — incumbents do better when the economy is not bad, for example. The work at 538 shows addition of such factors to polling data reduces bias and increases prediction accuracy dramatically.
Bottom line, I would not discount this prediction too quickly.
And yes, the Yahoo authors really are scientists. Yahoo employs quite a few scientists. Who do you think improves the search engines and figures out how best to structure the ad auctions and so on?. The author of the article here (at deathby1000papercuts) ought to drop the scare quotes, lest you be also thought of as being clueless.
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