Twitter helps predict hung parliament

Researchers from Cardiff and Manchester have used Twitter to predict election result.

A group of researchers from Cardiff and Manchester Universities have used Twitter to predict a hung parliament on 7 May.

Burnap, Sloan, and Williams from Cardiff, along with Gibson and Southern from Manchester University, make up one of twelve groups of leading academics who are showcasing their findings today at a major LSE conference (see table below).

The Cardiff / Manchester group is the only one to have used Twitter to predict the election result. All 12 groups agree no single party will win the 326 seats required for an overall majority.

The Cardiff / Manchester team forecasts the Conservatives will poll 286 votes, Labour 306, the Liberal Democrats 21 and UKIP 5, with the SNP on 9, Plaid Cymru on 3, and the Greens on 1.

Dr Pete Burnap, who leads the COSMOS web observatory platform at Cardiff University, said:

 "This is one of the first ventures by the UK political academic community into using Twitter to forecast Elections.

"Predictions have been published with varying levels of accuracy elsewhere in the world, but have received some criticism due to methodological issues.

"We are currently producing long-range forecasts, and will study whether accuracy improves/decreases in the lead-up and after the result emerges."