US Presidential Election 2012 Prediction using Census Corrected Twitter Model

Abstract

US Presidential Election 2012 has been a very tight race between the two key candidates. There were intense battle between the two key candidates. The election reflects the sentiment of the electorate towards the achievements of the incumbent President Obama. The campaign lasted several months and the effects can be felt in the internet and twitter. The presidential debates injected new vigor in the challenger's campaign and successfully captured the electorate of several states posing a threat to the incumbent's position. Much of the sentiment in the election has been captured in the online discussions. In this paper, we will be using the original model described in Choy et. al. (2011) using twitter data to forecast the next US president.