Though recent polls have President Obama and Mitt Romney running very tight in the polls, Obama is winning the battle of Twitter. Twitter recently launched the Twitter Political Index and the purpose of the index is to “Twitter users’ feelings towards the candidates as expressed in nearly two million Tweets each week,” according to Twitter. According to Politico, the index rates the positivity of tweets about the candidates so they can measure the prevalence of the conversation that Twitter says used to be relegated to places like Starbucks and business offices.
Twitter went on to give an example of how their system works. “For example, a score of 73 for a candidate indicates that Tweets containing their name or account name are on average more positive than 73 percent of all Tweets,” the social media giant wrote in a blog post. President Obama currently has a score of 34 compared to Romney’s 25 points.
“Just as new technologies like radar and satellite joined the thermometer and barometer to give forecasters a more complete picture of the weather, so too can the Index join traditional methods like surveys and focus groups to tell a fuller story of political forecasts,” the blog post continued. “It lends new insight into the feelings of the electorate, but is not intended to replace traditional polling — rather, it reinforces it.”
Twitter also released a chart showing how accurate their index is compared to the Gallup polls. They plan to update the index every morning.
