Updated Indian elections forecast

SentElectTM: Forecasting Elections based on
Sentiments in Social Media
V.S. Subrahmanian
SentiMetrix, Inc. & University of Maryland
@vssubrah
vs@sentimetrix.com
Apr 19 2014
© Sentimetrix, Inc
All rights reserved 2014
1
This work was performed for Sentimetrix, Inc.

SentElectTM Election Application
© Sentimetrix, Inc
2
On May 8 2013, Sentimetrix
predicted the outcome of
the upcoming Pakistan
election in front of 100+
people in V.S.
Subrahmanian’s keynote at
the Sentiment Analysis
Symposium in New York City
On May 9, the BBC said the
election was too close to call
“Pakistan Elections: Five
Reasons why the vote is
unpredictable”
Sentimetrix was correct!

SentElectTM
• Currently tracks Twitter feeds on virtually any topic
– Politicians
– Political parties
– Issues (in progress, expected completion April 2014)
• Identifies intensity of sentiment on each topic in each
tweet.
• Forecasts trends in terms of expected number of
supporters/opponents on Twitter
• Identifies individuals who are most influential in
shaping an opinion/trend
• Provides a single dashboard to cover all of this.
© Sentimetrix, Inc
3

SentElectTM
SentElectTM Functionalities Business Use
Identify sentiment and changes in
sentiment on any given topic
Track sentiment on both your political
campaign as well as your competitor’s
Learns a model on “big data” showing
how support/opposition to a topic spreads
Understand how your campaign (and your
opponent’s) are doing with voters and
why
Forecast the expected number of people
who will support/oppose a topic
Forecast how many people
support/oppose your campaign and/or
your opponent’s
Identify the most important individuals
responsible for shaping/spreading opinion
on a topic
Identify those shaping positive/negative
opinion about you and see if you can get
them to work on your behalf. Engage with
influential Twitter users
© Sentimetrix, Inc
4

SentElectTM Case Study
© Sentimetrix, Inc
5
• Upcoming Indian election
• Identified 31 entities to track.
• Learned diffusion models from
July 15 – Jan 25 2014.
• Tested models on Jan 25-Feb 20
data (~26 days)
• Forecast trends on all 31 entities
from Feb 20 2014 to May 15
2014.
• Tested diffusion forecasts on
January 25-Feb 20 2014 data with
Pearson correlation coefficients
consistently over 0.8, usually over
0.9.
SUMMARY STATISTICS
• Study reported here uses data from
July 2013 to Feb 20 2014
• Forecasts made till May 15 2014.
• 19.5M tweets studied in all
• 16M distinct Twitter accounts
• 40M edge network
Twitter collection done using Twitter
ontology and semantic database
developed by Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute. [@jahendler]

BJP Forecast
© Sentimetrix, Inc
6
July 15 2013
Feb 24 2014
Mar 24 2014
May 15 2014
OUTLOOK
• Positive
support for
BJP is
growing at
a faster
rate than
negatives.
• Outlook is
good but
more or
less same
as March 6
forecast.

Narendra Modi Forecast Forecast
© Sentimetrix, Inc
7
July 15 2013
Feb 24 2014
Mar 24 2014
May 15 2014
OUTLOOK
• Positive
support for
Modi is
growing at
a much
faster rate
than
negatives.
• Outlook is
very good
and has
improved
since our
March 6
forecast.

UPA Forecast
© Sentimetrix, Inc
8
July 15 2013
Feb 24 2014 Mar 24 2014
May 15 2014
OUTLOOK
• Opposition
to UPA
exceeds
support. It is
also growing
at a slightly
faster rate.
• Outlook for
the UPA is
not good
and has
worsened
slightly since
the March 6
forecast
• Number of
people
tweeting
about UPA is
way smaller

Congress Party Forecast
© Sentimetrix, Inc
9
July 15 2013
Feb 24 2014
Mar 24 2014
May 15 2014
OUTLOOK
• Congress
has more
supporters
than
opponents.
• Growth in
support
Iarger than
growth in
opposition
• But
number of
supporters
is small
compared
to BJP.

Rahul Gandhi Forecast
© Sentimetrix, Inc
10July 15 2013
Feb 24 2014
Mar 24 2014
May 15 2014
OUTLOOK
• Sentiment
on Rahul
Gandhi is
strong and
growth in
supporters
outweights
growth in
opponents.
• But in raw
numbers, h
is 1/3 the
supporters
that Modi
has.
• Outlook is
good but
not great.

Arvind Kejriwal Forecast
© Sentimetrix, Inc
11July 15 2013
Feb 24 2014
Mar 24 2014
May 15 2014
OUTLOOK
• Kejriwal
will have
more
opponents
than
supporters
by early
May.
• Steep
increase in
both
supporters
and
opponents
around
mid-
December
2013.

SentElect Summary Statistics
© Sentimetrix, Inc
12
BJP Narendra
Modi
UPA Congress
Party
Rahul
Gandhi
Arvind
Kejriwal
#Supporters
Mar 24 2014
294848 96376 59880 9324 102541 54777
#Opponent
Mar 24 2014
211002 43217 71514 5839 59958 42367
#Supporters
May 15 2014
385819 102669 68926 11289 147989 64371
#Opponent
May 15 2014
257902 48002 81436 7948 65820 71717
Accuracy
(PCC*) Pos.
0.999 0.998 0.998 0.977 0.995 0.979
Accuracy
(PCC) Neg.
0.988 0.998 0.998 0.970 0.996 0.971
* Pearson Correlation Coefficient

Head to Head: BJP vs. UPA/Congress
• Mar 24 2014:
– BJP shows almost 5 times as many
supporters as Congress/UPA
supporters, up in ratio from a month
back.
– BJP opponents are less than 3 times as
many as Congress/UPA opponents.
– So BJP is doing well.
• Forecast for May 15 2014:
– BJP will have almost 3x supporters as
compared to opponents.
– Congress/UPA has about 10% more
opponents than supporters.
• BJP’s outlook in terms of positives and
negatives shows a combined growth.
• But UPA/Congress combined negatives
exceed positives.
• And support for UPA/Congress is tepid
raising the question of Congress/UPA
supporters showing up to vote.
• In general, till May 15 2014, BJP seems
to garner more support than
Congress/UPA.
© Sentimetrix, Inc
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0 400000 800000
BJP -5/15
UPA/Congress -
5/15
BJP - 3/24
UPA/Congress -
3/24
Support
Opposition

Head to Head: Narendra Modi vs. Rahul Gandhi
• Mar 24 2014:
– Mr. Gandhi has about 5%
more supporters than Mr.
Modi.
– But Mr. Gandhi has 1.4x as
many opponents in
comparison to Mr. Modi.
• May 15 2014:
– In terms of supporters, Mr.
Gandhi is pulling ahead of Mr.
Modi with 1.5x supporters
compared with Mr. Gandhi.
– But on opponents, Mr. Gandhi
has 1.3x of the opponents Mr.
Modi has.
• This reverses a trend seen in
our Mar 6 2014 forecast.
• Head-to-head, Mr. Gandhi
has improved his showing in
between Feb 20 and Mar 24.
© Sentimetrix, Inc
14
0 200000
Modi -5/15
Gandhi - 5/15
Modi - 3/24
Gandhi - 3/24
Support
Opposition

Head to Head: Rahul Gandhi vs. Arvind Kejriwal
• Mar 24 2014:
– Mr Gandhi has 2x supporters
w.r.t. Mr. Kejriwal
– But he has 1.4x opponents w.r.t.
Mr. Kejriwal (down from 2x in
our Feb 6 forecast)
• May 15 2014:
– Mr. Gandhi will have over 2x
supporters that Mr. Kejriwal [an
about turn from our Mar 6
forecast!]
– Mr. Kejriwal will have 1.2x
opponents w.r.t. Mr. Gandhi, a
significant reduction of the ratio
from the last month.
• In short, Mr. Gandhi has made an
about-turn in the race in terms of
positives.
• Congress/UPA should outperform
AAP/Mr. Kejriwal.
© Sentimetrix, Inc
15
0 200000
Kejriwal -5/15
Gandhi - 5/15
Kejriwal - 3/24
Gandhi - 3/24
Support
Opposition

Head to Head: Narendra Modi vs. Arvind Kejriwal
• Mar 24 2014:
– Mr Modi has 1.9x supporters
as Mr. Kejriwal
– But on opponents, he is more
or less even with Mr. Kejriwal
(a sharp reduction from our
Mar 6 talk)
• May 15 2014:
– Mr. Modi and Mr. Kejriwal will
have about 1.6x the supporters
of Mr. Kejriwal
– Mr. Kejriwal will have about
1.5x the number of opponents
as Mr. Modi
• Overall, the situation in the
Modi vs. Kejriwal race has not
changed much.
• Though support for Mr. Kejriwal
is growing, opposition is
growing at a much faster rate.
• We expect BJP to handily
outperform AAP/Mr. Kejriwal.
© Sentimetrix, Inc
16
0 100000 200000
Kejriwal -5/15
Modi - 5/15
Kejriwal - 3/24
Modi - 3/24
Support
Opposition

Forecast Summary
© Sentimetrix, Inc
17
Forecast #1
• Narendra Modi will
be India’s next Prime
Minister.
Forecast #2
• BJP (by itself) will fall
short of a majority
in
Parliament, securing
less than 272 seats.
Forecast #3
• Next Indian
government will be
a BJP-led coalition

Forecast Risks
• Our forecast can go wrong.
– Risk #1 Forecasting based on unsupervised learning is
difficult at best. No training data connecting votes on the
ground in India to number of supporters/opponents on
Twitter. Selection bias.
– Risk #2 Forecast is based on publicly available Twitter
data, not on entire Twitter fire-hose.
– Risk #3 Twitter-based and technology based risks: geo-
location issues, bots/sybils/fake accounts.
– Risk #4 Changing situation on the ground with new
allegations (e.g. corruption) emerging frequently.
– Risk #5 External events we can’t control for (e.g. terrorist
attacks) can dramatically change the electoral landscape.
© Sentimetrix, Inc
18

One Sybil’s strategy: @IsabellaObregom
1. Take tweet from a reputable account:
– @AapKaJawab, an Aam Aadmi Party enthusiast, retweets:
“Arvind Kejriwal breaks into Manna Dey song on brotherhood at
swearing-in – http://t.co/bVCHPte60k”
2. Follow link, rewrap in new shortened URL
– @AapKaJawab’s link leads to an Indian news article
– @IsabellaObregom shrinks URL with Adf.ly, tweets:
“Arvind Kejriwal breaks into Manna Dey song on brotherhood at
swearing-in http://t.co/81cq9eyrNh”
3. @IsabellaObregom now paid per click through Adf.ly!
(In early 2014, Adf.ly and Twitter suspended account – original
owner tweeted only in Spanish)
© Sentimetrix, Inc
19

A larger Sybil network in our dataset
• We found many Sybil/bot accounts
• @Marie____Taylor and @Amy____Jones tweet
identically, except different shortened links.
– Overlapping network of followers
– 100K+ tweets
– Many “smaller” inactive followers, each following 30-
40 random people, with 30-40 bot followers.
– Related: @Lea___Smith, @Megan__Martinez, etc…
© Sentimetrix, Inc
20

SentiMetrix Contact Information
• Address
6017 Southport Drive
20814 Bethesda MD
USA
• E-mail
info@sentimetrix.com
• www.sentimetrix.com
• Telephone +1 240 479
9286
• V.S. Subrahmanian
• Twitter: @vssubrah
• Email:
vs@sentimetrix.com
• www.cs.umd.edu/~vs/
• Telephone: +1 301 405
6724
© Sentimetrix, Inc
22

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