Twitter Exit Polls
In response, and as an addition, to Wilbert Baans’ storytelling with public databases, I made a little twitter scraper. It indexed all twits for the query http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%22i+voted%22+%2B+McCain+OR+Obama+-twitvote, up till a month ago. From November the 4th till November the 5th the script scrapes new twits for this query every minute.
A point goes to Obama if the regular expression /vote.*?obama/i succeeds, it goes to McCain if the regular expression /vote.*mccain/i succeeds, else it is undecided / unrecognized.
The result can be found at Twitter Poll. So far Obama is winning.
Update: Wilbert Baan has made theses stats into a beautiful visualization:
There is an other twitter poll on Mashable.
Update 2: I tried making a similar exit poll based on MySpace, but that query does not yield results sorted on time. Also, just like Google, MySpace only returns a maximum of 1000 results per query. Unfortunately I’m thus stuck with the same numbers, no matter how many times I will scrape it.
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Nice, will keep track of it tomorrow night. Are you bringing your laptop BTW?
Is the Twitter Poll omitting duplicates because I noticed multiple (but different) tweets from the same person?
[...] great polling service Erik Borra created a polling service based on what people say on Twitter. With the service you get results on what people say they voted [...]
[...] great polling service Erik Borra created a polling service based on what people say on Twitter. With the service you get results on what people say they voted [...]
[...] can say Twitter is pretty much in favor of Obama. To update the results refresh the page. A point goes to Obama if the regular expression /vote.*?obama/i succeeds, it goes to McCain if the regular expression [...]
[...] I made the first the first animation Erik Borra replied by developing the idea into something that stores the data retrieved from Twitter in a database. I made a new interface [...]
[...] Twitter Poll von Erik Borra handelt es sich um eine einfache, aggregierte Auswertung einer Twitter Suche, bei der man sich [...]
[...] Un’altra rappresentazione visiva del voto in corso si trova su TwitterPoll (il grafico relativo è qui). [...]
[...] couple of innovative ways of using Twitter are the I voted widget and the Twitter Exit Polls, showing how Twitterers voted. And Mashable has combines tweets and mapping to show the election [...]
Twitter is great for everything it is a revolutionary THING for Internet.
As we know now, he is President of US now. I am impressed with Twittwer though. I have read some very good stories about twitter and how people are using it. Even a lady has got a good job from there. I think this is the peak of Social Media stuff.
looks like, that the twitter user were totally right
i like this blog it is great. As we know now he is President of united states now. I am inspired with Twitter though. I have read some interesting good stories about twitter and how people are using it. Even a lady has got a good job from there. I like it very much.
It seems that your scraper was an accurate measure of how the election played out. Nice job using the net for an accurate picture on what was to come.
That was pretty nifty. Pretty lopsided results for Obama, but probably due ot the demographic that Twitter hits. Thanks for showing us what you did. I may try my hand at doing something like this.
That is a pretty cool scraper you put together. I guess what it showed verified how the voting went as well. Now that Obama has been President officially 1 week…what score do you give him?
1 week is short. Better wait 100 days.
Henrik, 100% agree
Twitter is an amazing tool, for allowing you to connect with others
Hey, Great work, stumbled across this only now. Very interesting, too bad I didn’t find this when and before the election.
Nice post. Very interesting. Would’ve been great if I found this before the election. Keep it up Erik.
Well the votes were 100% accurate I guess. Twitter is such an awesome tool. It’s going to hit big time very soon. Any way, talking about the administration I agree with Henrik. The first 100 days are critical. So we’ll have to wait and see.
As twitter has a power of all twitter users all around the world so I think result of each people is very true and correct. This is about goodness of twitter. It is a big help for me and it is more than an addiction.
This is an awesome way to use twitter to do polls on some really important issues! I can’t wait to see a tool like this grow.