Mulcair gathering steam in NDP race, Wikipedia tea leaves suggest - Globe and Mail Options

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<img alt="" height="1" width="1" />Mulcair gathering steam in NDP race, [b]Wikipedia tea leaves suggest[/b]
Globe and Mail
The race to become the NDP's next leader is moving into its final stretch, with five more debates planned before the vote is held on March 24. But the campaign to succeed the late Jack Layton is now almost four months old and there is precious little ...

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[carbuncle]

I thought this was a very interesting article, actually. The premise is that traffic to WP articles on political candidates increases prior to the election in rough proportion to the actual results. This means that WP traffic provides another way to gauge public opinion (and make predictions on future events which are vote-based).

Now, this probably works best if people are generally unaware of this phenomenon. Once people are aware of this and start to look at it to make predictions (or wagers), other people will take advantage of this by deliberately skewing the results to make it appear that their candidate is in the lead (or to alter the odds) and the predictions stop matching the actual results. But it may be useful (or profitable) while it lasts.

[thekohser]

The premise is that traffic to WP articles on political candidates increases prior to the election in rough proportion to the actual results.

Exactly -- look what happened when I declared my candidacy for the Wikimedia UK board, on November 19, 2011.