Predicting Elections: Social Media Data and Techniques

Abstract

During the last decade, the use social media has provided a virtual community where the users express their intention, opinion and communicate with others. Organizations and researchers are very much interested to investigate the polarity of the user's opinions for making predictions and planning of future plans. The use and influence of social media in politics have been recognized by many researchers and political parties in making electoral predictions and devising future campaign strategies. As the literature on making electoral predictions is increasing day by day, this study aims to give an overview of the current state of approaches being utilized, social media used for data collection and the outcomes of the proposed approaches, either succeeded in making accurate electoral predictions using social media data and approaches used or not. This study gives a quick overview and guides researchers in understanding the approaches previously adopted and data sources utilized in predicting electoral results.