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Google Politics Technology

Google Releases Raw Election Polling Results 51

An anonymous reader writes "Last week, Nate Silver ranked Google Consumer Surveys as one of the most accurate polling firms of the 2012 US election. This week, Google has released the raw data that went into its election-day prediction, and is running a contest for interesting visualizations of that data. They provide a few examples of their own, including a WebGL globe view."
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Google Releases Raw Election Polling Results

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  • Been interesting if (Score:5, Interesting)

    by transporter_ii ( 986545 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @08:21AM (#42053703) Homepage

    It would have been more interesting if the "Who do you want to win the US Presidential Election?" question had allowed for *any* candidate to be entered. I didn't want either of the two running to win. In fact, it is kind of a rip that only a handful of states actually count write-in votes.

    This is part of the reason that the one-party system has a stranglehold on America because it craftily marginalizes decenters.

    • by TheLink ( 130905 )
      It would have been more interesting if Google's financial arm used its data...

      Think of the stock predictions you could make when you have access to so many people's emails and search data. Sure some data and predictions would be wrong, but if you have some safeguards I think they could make a lot of money.

      Of course that would be bad PR if they were caught doing that :).
    • I take it you meant "dissenters"?

      I'm not from the US, but it's interesting to notice how out in the middle of nowhere, there were a lot of Romney voters. In areas with denser population, there were a lot more Obama voters.

    • I didn't want either of the two running to win.

      From the survey details [google.com] they had three target answers:

      "Mitt Romney / Paul Ryan, the Republicans" or "Barack Obama / Joe Biden, the Democrats" or "Third party candidate / Undecided"

      It sounds like you would have answered "Third party candidate / Undecided"

      This is part of the reason that the one-party system has a stranglehold on America because it craftily marginalizes decenters.

      Hey you leave my centers out of this :-) But in all seriousness, this is about an election poll ... you should have been out campaigning for Gary Johnson or whoever you wanted a long time ago. I think that campaign finances are the root of the problem that we should attack but apparently you are just upset that some Google Survey didn't allow everyone to write in specific names?

      • by The_Noid ( 28819 )

        I think that campaign finances are the root of the problem that we should attack...

        Actually, it's the "winner takes all" setup that causes the two-party system. There is only 1 presidential position to distribute, meaning people will only vote for one of the two candidates that actually stand a chance of winning.

        • Actually, it's the "winner takes all" setup that causes the two-party system.

          True, but...

          There is only 1 presidential position to distribute, meaning people will only vote for one of the two candidates that actually stand a chance of winning.

          This isn't really the reason there is a two-party system in the US. Lots of systems with a President elected directly or (as in the US) indirectly using have multiparty systems. The main reason the US doesn't is that single-winner contests using either plurality or

    • by Bigby ( 659157 )

      "Scientific" polls used for the debates should not be asking "Who will you vote for?". Even if they have a multiple choice response. That is a question to predict the outcome of the election. Which is a valid poll. However for the debates, it should be "Without consideration of voting for the best candidate, A, with a chance to defeat the candidate, B, you like less than A, who would you vote for?"

      You would see a lot more people with polling numbers at 10%+. You might get up to 4. Then other candidate

    • Google's Election Results map would show you either two-candidate or multi-candidate results. Sometimes you had to click to get the multi-candidate results, but it was all there, so you could see the percentages that went to Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, other third-party and independent candidates. Getting the details for Congress was a bit tougher, because they did a better job of visuals for the President, Senate, and Governor than for the 438 district races, but the results were there.

      • I did find the "Percent Reporting" numbers to be frustratingly misleading, though, and that's not just the fault of Google; the California Secretary of State website had similar issues. The problem is that, while they can say "X% of Precincts Reporting", that doesn't actually tell you vote counts in jurisdictions that allow absentee ballots, voting by mail, or other slow-to-count voting methods. So for instance, some of the California races for US Congress took a week to finish counting, even though they

  • by EmagGeek ( 574360 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @08:42AM (#42053803) Journal

    I know I am pissing into the wind in asking people to call their senators and congressmen and voice your opposition to the new bill that gives the government warrantless, suspicionless access to your email and anything you store in the cloud, like your google docs.

    http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57552225-38/senate-bill-rewrite-lets-feds-read-your-e-mail-without-warrants/ [cnet.com]

    Once government can read all of your email (not just what you leave on GMail longer than 6 months) on a whim without suspicion, they'll be able to come after all of their opposition.

    "Oh no, they'll never do that," or, "oh, that'll never happen to ME." Lots of Jews said stuff like that in the 30's.

    Just wait.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Once they can read it without suspicion or any human interaction, they will write a script that reads everyone's email in order to find troublesome people why may not toe the party line. How can that go wrong?

    • by iserlohn ( 49556 )

      Aggregated data is a tool, just like guns. You can do both good and evil with it. It's just that in the general populace of a functional modern society, you can do a lot more good with widely available aggregated data than with widely available firearms.

    • I know I am pissing into the wind in asking people to call their senators and congressmen and voice your opposition to the new bill that gives the government warrantless, suspicionless access to your email and anything you store in the cloud, like your google docs.

      I think you missed the follow-up
      http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/11/20/2122223/that-was-fast-leahy-drops-warrantless-e-mail-surveillance-bill [slashdot.org]

      Looks like the Prosecutors and Police aren't getting anything for Christmas this year.

      Once government can read all of your email (not just what you leave on GMail longer than 6 months) on a whim without suspicion, they'll be able to come after all of their opposition.

      They can already do that.
      The bill just more people do the same thing

    • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

      The bill died already, it was in the news this morning.

  • My god, the navigator on their WebGL globe sucks so bad. Don't they know how to do an intersection test and move the surface as far as the mouse moves instead of some random distance? It's so clumsy...
  • City of Boston November 2012 Presidential Election Results [cityofboston.gov]. Only three precincts reported less than 100% turnout. A great day for democracy!

    It should be noted that in Boston, there are no Republicans; the city is owned lock, stock & barrel by Mayor Tom 'Mumbles' Menino. [mumblesmenino.us] Oh, and his party affiliation is (D), which is so often left out of summaries. "You Never Stumbles When You Votes for Mumbles"

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