{"id":121,"date":"2009-07-15T23:03:34","date_gmt":"2009-07-16T03:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/scotthartley\/?p=121"},"modified":"2009-07-20T12:26:49","modified_gmt":"2009-07-20T16:26:49","slug":"predictivesearch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/scotthartley\/2009\/07\/15\/predictivesearch\/","title":{"rendered":"Google or the Polls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, Google Managing Policy Counsel Pablo Chavez wrote about the initial results of Indonesia&#8217;s Presidential election on the <a href=\"http:\/\/googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com\/2009\/07\/indonesias-search-for-president.html\" target=\"_blank\">Google Global Policy Blog<\/a>.\u00a0 Early polling data indicated that incumbent SBY had been re-elected, but this was no surprise.\u00a0 Polls, and putative on-the-ground opinion was that he would win.\u00a0 Surprising, however, were the subsequent results of opposition contender Megawati and Jusuf Kalla.\u00a0 As discussed in today&#8217;s Internet &amp; Democracy piece entitled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/idblog\/2009\/07\/15\/electionprediction\/\" target=\"_blank\">Google: Tomorrow&#8217;s Silicon (Not Crystal) Ball<\/a>,&#8221; Google \u2013not the pollsters\u2013 got election ordering correct.\u00a0 Polling indicated that Jusuf Kalla would lead Megawati.\u00a0 Internet search analytics \u2013albeit referencing only 5% of Indonesia&#8217;s 240 million citizens\u2013 proved to be more accurate in predicting electoral outcome.\u00a0 In lead-up weeks, Google proffered swelling numbers on SBY, and trending on Mega that far surpassed Jusuf Kalla.\u00a0 Though undoubtedly not perfect, with the advent of greater Internet penetration this predictive role will grow.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve outlined such predictions in a July 16, 2009 Jakarta Globe Op-Ed, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/thejakartaglobe.com\/opinion\/in-the-future-crystal-balls-will-be-all-silicon\/318464\">In the Future, Crystal Balls will be all Silicon<\/a>,&#8221; a Creative Commons re-publication of my Internet &amp; Democracy post. In a subsequent article, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.policyinnovations.org\/ideas\/briefings\/data\/000120\" target=\"_blank\">Understanding Election Twitter<\/a>,&#8221; for the Carnegie Council&#8217;s <em>Policy Innovations<\/em> magazine, I highlight the importance in understanding domestic political institutions. Only when being informed translates into being influential does it matter for politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, Google Managing Policy Counsel Pablo Chavez wrote about the initial results of Indonesia&#8217;s Presidential election on the Google Global Policy Blog.\u00a0 Early polling data indicated that incumbent SBY had been re-elected, but this was no surprise.\u00a0 Polls, and putative on-the-ground opinion was that he would win.\u00a0 Surprising, however, were the subsequent results of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[497,2103,6581,6580,6121],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-google","tag-indonesia","tag-megawati","tag-sby","tag-scott-hartley"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/scotthartley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/scotthartley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/scotthartley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/scotthartley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/scotthartley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/scotthartley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/scotthartley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions\/141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/scotthartley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/scotthartley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/scotthartley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}