The Crowdwire

Our LIVE Social Media Exit Poll

Note: This post was published on Election Day when our Live Exit Poll was running here in real time. The poll was turned on at 12:01 am that day and turned off at 12 midnight, shortly after the presidential-race results were known. Though no longer live, it stands as a snapshot of a very big day in politics and social media.

Running now and throughout Election Day at the top of this page is The Crowdwire’s exclusive Live Social Media Exit Poll. It shows the number of people who are sharing the news that they voted - either by tweet or public Facebook post - and, if they reveal it, how they voted.

The numbers are updated every five minutes. The gray section at the top shows the overall number of people reporting they voted. This reflects everyone who reports voting today by saying “I voted,” #voted, #justvoted and many other similar expressions. The tally of those who also included an indication of how they voted - either for Obama or Romney - is shown in the red and blue sections.*

Hover over the graph and it will show the numbers for any 5-minute period.

This is obviously not a mirror of the voting public, or a reflection of how the public at large is voting today. Rather, it reflects the particular slice of the public who are social-media users. Imagine that a new state has just been added to the union. In terms of population, it’s a big California-sized state, but it has no geographic location. Its residents are famous for having a lot to say about politics and other subjects. Our exit poll is a live dispatch from the state called Social Media where, as the graph shows, the voting is now underway!

*If our “vote count” were based on pure mentions of Obama and Romney, it would capture people who happen to mention the candidate they oppose and other irrelevant mentions. The tools we used aim to filter out as many such comments as possible. We are monitoring the results through the day to ensure that the data reflect actual voting tendencies as reported in tweets and public Facebook posts.

1. lmd reblogged this from thecrowdwire
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4. perzadook reblogged this from thecrowdwire and added:

   more cool

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   Pretty cool!

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