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	<title>Malcolm Coles &#187; prediction</title>
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		<title>Google&#8217;s European election predictions based on wrong search terms</title>
		<link>http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/googles-euro-election-predictions/</link>
		<comments>http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/googles-euro-election-predictions/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:30:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Malcolm Coles</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Internet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prediction]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Google puts UKIP 13 points ahead of the Conservatives in the European elections. But Google has used the wrong search term - and the real, and worrying story, is that the BNP is ahead of everyone.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://blog.arhg.net/2009/06/google-puts-ukip-13-points-ahead-of.html">Andrew Girdwood</a>'s interesting post about the <a href="http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2009/06/europes-elections-seen-by-google.html">Google Policy Europe blog</a> is headed 'Google puts UKIP 13 points ahead of the Conservatives in the European elections' - based on trend data from <a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#">Google Insights for Search</a>.</p>
<p><strong>But Google has used the wrong search term - and the real, and worrying, story is that the BNP is ahead of everyone.</strong></p>
<h3>What Google showed</h3>
<p>Here's Google's graph (click it to see it bigger), which shows the British National Party languishing in last.</p>
<p><div id="attachment_1562" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 500px"><a href="http://malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/euro-google-prediction.jpg"><img class="size-large wp-image-1562" title="euro-google-prediction" src="http://malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/euro-google-prediction-490x211.jpg" alt="Google's original European Election results prediction for the UK" width="490" height="211" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Google&#39;s original European Election results prediction for the UK</p></div></p>
<p>It gives these figures (NB these are normalised relative scores, <strong>not share of vote predictions</strong> - the real results are out on monday):</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Labour party</strong> 38</li>
<li><strong>Conservative party</strong> 41</li>
<li><strong>Green party</strong> 32</li>
<li><strong>UKIP</strong> 54</li>
<li><strong>British National Party</strong> 11</li>
</ul>
<p>You get very different results if you use Labour instead of Labour Party, for instance (when the Labour shoots up - but maybe this is because of pregnant women - showing the difficulty of interpreting this data).</p>
<h3>If you use BNP instead of British National Party</h3>
<p>Here's <a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=conservative%2Cbnp%2Cukip%2Cgreen%20party&amp;geo=GB&amp;date=today%207-d&amp;cmpt=q">what you get</a> if you use BNP instead of British National Party, which seems to be me to be a much more likely search term.</p>
<p>The BNP are massively ahead of everyone - a worrying result.</p>
<p><div id="attachment_1561" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 499px"><a href="http://malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/euro-google-election-redone.png"><img class="size-large wp-image-1561" title="euro-google-election-redone" src="http://malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/euro-google-election-redone-489x216.png" alt="Google's European Election predictions if you use BNP instead of British National Party" width="489" height="216" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Google&#39;s European Election predictions if you use BNP instead of British National Party</p></div></p>
<p>(Apologies that I've got the parties in a different order so the key is different. Also, for clarity, I've shown just the most recent days. And because of the difficulty of deciding between Labour and Labour Party I left it out).</p>
<p>Thanks to <a href="http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2009/06/links_for_20090606.php">Martin Belam's blog</a>, where I spotted Andrew's post. For past Google predictions, see <a href="http://www.nickburcher.com/2009/05/eurovision-2009-norway-win-as-predicted.html">this</a> and <a href="http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/eurovision-results-vs-googles-predictions-nul-points/">this</a> for differing takes on whether Google got it right.</p>
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