Can Facebook Predict Control of the Senate?

Politico notes that in 2012 “eight out of nine toss-up Senate races were won by the candidate with the more engaged Facebook fan base. And in the 2012 House elections, 20 of the 33 most competitive races across the country were won by the candidate with a measurable Facebook fan engagement advantage.”

“The correlation between growing fan base, higher fan engagement and victory on Election Day led us to ask this question: Are Facebook metrics a crystal ball that can be used to predict election outcomes?”

“So far, we have trained our forecasting model on four key Senate elections in North Carolina, Alaska, Kentucky and Michigan. In those races, our two-party contest Facebook model shows Republicans potentially picking up one seat.”