"I Wanted to Predict Elections with Twitter and all I got was this Lousy Paper" -- A Balanced Survey on Election Prediction using Twitter Data

TL;DR

This paper provides a balanced survey of election prediction using Twitter data, highlighting the overestimation of Twitter's predictive power and emphasizing the need for more rigorous, reproducible research in this area.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive review of existing studies on Twitter-based election prediction, critically analyzing their methodologies and biases, and calls for more balanced and sound research.

Findings

Twitter's predictive power for elections is overestimated

Many studies lack reproducibility and balanced analysis

Hard research problems in election prediction remain unsolved

Abstract

Predicting X from Twitter is a popular fad within the Twitter research subculture. It seems both appealing and relatively easy. Among such kind of studies, electoral prediction is maybe the most attractive, and at this moment there is a growing body of literature on such a topic. This is not only an interesting research problem but, above all, it is extremely difficult. However, most of the authors seem to be more interested in claiming positive results than in providing sound and reproducible methods. It is also especially worrisome that many recent papers seem to only acknowledge those studies supporting the idea of Twitter predicting elections, instead of conducting a balanced literature review showing both sides of the matter. After reading many of such papers I have decided to write such a survey myself. Hence, in this paper, every study relevant to the matter of electoral prediction using social media is commented. From this review it can be concluded that the predictive power of Twitter regarding elections has been greatly exaggerated, and that hard research problems still lie ahead.