Can traffic to a Presidential Candidate’s homepage be used to gauge who will win this year’s election? Hitwise has published recent data on the traffic both American presidential candidates have seen in the last month (ending 8/23), and while the results may not shed much light on the forthcoming election’s outcome, they reveal a few interesting trends.
Hitwise has ranked each state by two criteria: its contribution to each site’s total traffic, and the the overall likelihood that a user in the state will visit the candidate’s site (called the Representation index). If either metric is applicable to the election, it will be Representation Index, which indicates the candidate’s popularity on a per-state basis and isn’t affected by the state’s population.
Unsurprisingly, California represents the most traffic share for both candidates, accounting for 13% of Obama’s total traffic and 12% of McCain’s. But both candidates have also seen a similar Representation Index from the state, which means that a similar number of Californians have visited each site. Given the state’s Democratic history, this is surprising - apparently Californians are interested in learning about the opposition. Conversely, in left-leaning New York, McCain’s site has only seen about half as much traffic as Obama’s.
Hitwise also notes that the highest Representation Index for Obama came from Maryland, Colorado, New Mexico, Georgia, and DC, while McCain’s come from Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, and Louisiana. More of McCain’s states are “battlegrounds”, but there’s no way of knowing if people are visiting these sites because they like him or hate him - perhaps the traffic stats from McCainSpace would be a better indicator.
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are u serious?
It’d be interesting if you had the data from 2004….
Why wouldnt seriously play a role here?
so the map and the charts don’t go together… that’s kind of confusing…
at least connect the dots and do the math for us… based on electoral votes, who does it predict wins?
Mmm, its numbers and more numbers.. again.
Jason, even though it might not be true, you should have ended the title with “Yes we can!”
Internet numbers do not translate into winning the election. Ron Paul is a very important illustration of this. He Has over 100,000 members in his meetup groups compared to John McCains 0 and Obama’s less than 10,000. Now RPs campaign for liberty has 91,000 members. I did an analysis a while ago which you can watch here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4E1fAnxeqQ
Obama I think got the next presidential block on lock
http://www.ShawnDrewry.com
Great idea… but not really understanding the Representation index
From hitwise…
1) Representation Index: “a method of comparing two groups or audience, and expressing the different between the two as an index, in this case, is the candidate’s website and the overall online population”
2) Representation Index “summarizes the likelihood of online users in that state to visit the website”.
Come on hitwise, you can write better than this.
Obama has the advantage with younger voters; the same as the Internet. McCain has the advantage with older voters; a disadvantage with web adoption. The sample is biased.
I think I might vote for Obama soul for the fact he is for net neutrality.
Absolutely not! The vast majority of internet users are huge liberals (this is evident if you look at the republican parties lack of a technology policy). So I’d agree with Dash Chang that this sample is biased. I will say however, that future search data will certainly be useful for determining results of future elections. Example: I’m a 20 year old internet user currently, but I know I’ll still use the internet when I’m 80! That is if it still exists.
No.
The hitwise link above is broken. It has an quote mark after it
I think if every person who shows interest online came to the ballot box obama would win. I think he will win reguardless of data but polls like the Internet don’t accurately reflect the voting demographics which are ultimately the key for creating a barack obama and our friend joe biden to a fabulous victory!
Highly doubt it. And that Hitwise post has to be the most speculative POS I’ve ever read. How about some absolute numbers? Is Obama bigger than McCain online? If so, by how much?
No, but I think Google can!
I don’t think the internet can be used as any weight. It was only a handful of months ago that everywhere you went Ron Paul fans were preaching the gospel, rigging polls and generally discussing his imminent victory. If you were going to believe the internet the election was won the moment he decided to campaign.
Now we see the same thing with Obama and just like before what ‘the internet’ presents and what is actually happening are two different scenarios that grow further apart each day.
I think at the end of the election politicians will regard the internet as what it really is…. a largely unmoderated playground for idiots and people cashing in on idiots.
Also for some reason it doesn’t let me post comments from Opera in your new layout:
411 Length Required
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If elections aren’t stolen like past two have been, then Obama will win by a landslide.
Every new election there is a huge number of young new voters and most of them are tech savvy. Of course repug propaganda platform will flood us with the “youngster apathy” card, but we already know their tricks.
So fuck them, last election we were 20 million on MTV but not on the ballots, now we will be 30 millions everywhere demanding and enforcing change!
Well on account of Obama and Mccain being to busy lying to the American people to fill out paperwork, both of these canidates missed the sign up deadline to have their names on the ballot in Texas. So gonna have to change that right of the bat. hahahahahahahaha which is dumber? elephant or donkey?
Do we have similar data on the last election? Otherwise, it is too premature to infer anything from the data we have.
So, I think the post did not answer the question posed in the title. Seems to be an “I don’t know” to me!
I visited the websites of both Obama and Mccain .I don’t think website traffic trends can have any impact on the election.
How about sending me some traffic… Vote on Offshore drilling.
http://www.dumpitinthepump.com.....r-opinion/
Internet traffic might not be the best predictor of who will win, but it can def. let you express yourself.
Is Offshore drilling just for votes?
No.
These numbers won’t have any predictive power over who wins the election. Not only is it too soon, but looking at someone’s web site doesn’t translate to a vote. At least I just can’t see it happening that way. It would be interesting to see how many of the visitors to a candidate’s web site visited the other’s web site. That might be a sign of a more informed (enlightened? intelligent? responsible?) voter.
Once again, thanks for parroting mass media propaganda and completely ignoring 3rd party candidates. Just ’cause they’re censored by FOX doesn’t oblige you to do the same…
Yes, they’re OTHER people running for president. No, you’re not being objective when you say “they can’t win.” You’re just repeating what TV tells you to think. You call yourself “realistic” when your reality is TV.
Pretty sad.
For another source of data, check out the Democratic National Convention’s SMS map; http://www.demconvention.com/sms-map/
Shows where people’s concerns are.
Until we can text our votes in from our cell phones, I don’t see young people voting…
@Yann - it is perhaps true that the media does not consider third party candidates, but logistically, third party candidates don’t help Nielsen ratings. The media will always focus on the the big two as long as they remain the big two.
And, no exposure means fat-chance-in-hell of winning the election, so it’s not presumptuous at all to say that a third-party candidate will not win. That’s just life, man, no point in whining about it.
Interesting data point but you would be better sticking to prediction markets which have proven predictive power:
http://www.hubdub.com/election_map
or:
http://electoralmap.net/index.php
You can check on alexa and compare.
http://tinyurl.com/6kolkj
Obama is clearly winning on web visits by a landslide.
I’m not sure how accurate this will be since it’s just based upon traffic. Without stereotyping, I would assume that more liberal voters tend to visit candidates Web sites. Also, there appears to be no account for 3rd party candidates. Still an interesting study to look at.
http://kreuzer33.wordpress.com.....ffic-data/
No way in hell. Completely different group of people voting for McCain and Obama
NO…unless you are just counting the youth in america!
@john
I agree - traffic numbers do not cut it!
I get my overview from the polls.
I use a widget to keep track of the progression of polls. The widget shows the election polls by strength of states.
In addition to other different graphical visualizations of data, this one displays the progression of votes over time.
It gives a great overview and is updated when the new polls come in!
http://www.youcalc.com/apps/1218019592041
… and its easy to put on your blog!
Make a difference, keep on voting!
The next president to be swearn into office will be Al Gore.