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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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thekohser
Loving some of the comments:

QUOTE
Interested Western Observer

11:37 AM on January 9, 2012

This article is pure speculation masquerading as news!


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BackroomBob

11:40 AM on January 9, 2012

Wow. I have seen some lazy political analysis in my day, but this takes the cake.


QUOTE
xj

11:41 AM on January 9, 2012

This is one of the most ridiculous articles I've ever seen. Especially because it's not the general public voting for NDP leader, but party members! NOT JOURNALISM.


QUOTE
Stan L

12:12 PM on January 9, 2012

Coincidence is not correlation......

You have no idea why people are going to Wikipedia, and in this race? no way of telling that the people who are going to wikipedia have any influence in the outcome of the race via a vote.

Increase traffic can be due to several things....ie: it follows a news article that people want to know more about, as the convention grows closer journalists/public need a refresher and etc......

Wikipedia indicates interest to be sure.....but does that mean it translates into voter intention? specifically in a niche voting situtation where only SOME of the traffic actually has voting ability?

This is a reach and is no substitute for real analysis.


QUOTE
Horace _Gerstanblut

11:50 AM on January 9, 2012

I never thought I would actually yearn for the days where the Globe was publishing corrupt incompetent Nanos polls and calling it news. This is a new low.


QUOTE
trappist84

11:54 AM on January 9, 2012

How lazy is journalism really getting? Citing Wikipedia isn't even okay in a Highschool paper! lol


QUOTE
Gregory Kohs

12:40 PM on January 9, 2012

I've just completed an extension of Grenier's statistical analysis of Wikipedia and -- this just in -- now beating out Mulcair in the NDP race are the following candidates:

Mr. Pikachu

Ms. Pamela Anderson

Mr. Rusty Trombone

Wikipedia is an excellent source of political forecasting!


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
QUOTE(carbuncle @ Mon 9th January 2012, 11:20pm) *

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.
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