Northeastern assistant professor of political science Nick Beauchamp has created an innovative computational model to gauge up-to-date voter intentions in individual states using Twitter
National polls have traditionally been a go-to barometer to gauge public opinion of presidential candidates and who has the inside track on the race for the White House. But Northeastern assistant professor of political science Nick Beauchamp says state-level polls provide an even better example of voter intention. The problem, he says, is that state-level polling is rare and often focuses primarily on swing states.
So Beauchamp created an innovative computational model to gauge up-to-date voter intentions in individual states using Twitter. In a paper published on Sept. 13 in the American Journal of Political Science, Beauchamp explains that social media is an ideal platform for predictive polling data.
“There is a strong need for temporal data in a short period of time,” said Beauchamp, who studies political persuasion and how political opinions are formed and change over time. “State-level polling is expensive and hard to do well. But if we could afford it, we would poll on an even finer level.”
Read the full story at news@Northeastern.
