Assessing candidate preference through web browsing history
Files
Accepted manuscript
Date
2018
Authors
Comarela, Giovanni
Durairajan, Ramakrishnan
Barford, Paul R.
Christenson, Dino
Crovella, Mark
Version
Accepted manuscript
OA Version
Citation
Giovanni Comarela, Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Paul Barford, Dino Christenson, Mark Crovella. 2018. "Assessing Candidate Preference through Web Browsing History." Proceedings of ACM KDD 2018. https://doi.org/10.1145/3219819.3219884
Abstract
Predicting election outcomes is of considerable interest to candidates, political scientists, and the public at large. We propose the use of Web browsing history as a new indicator of candidate preference among the electorate, one that has potential to overcome a number of the drawbacks of election polls. However, there are a number of challenges that must be overcome to effectively use Web browsing for assessing candidate preference—including the lack of suitable ground truth data and the heterogeneity of user populations in time and space. We address these challenges, and show that the resulting methods can shed considerable light on the dynamics of voters’ candidate preferences in ways that are difficult to achieve using polls.
Description
License
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