Online tools for predicting Super-Tuesday winners

Joshua Levy had to say this last time around about search patterns and elections :

Amidst all of the head-scratching — or self-flagellating, as I like to call it — following pollsters’ erroneous predictions in New Hampshire is a sign that the web may have had it right all along.

Yahoo! has released some Buzz data that shows that Hillary Clinton’s “Buzz Score” — “the percentage of Yahoo! users searching for that subject on a given day, multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read” — went up and up in the runup to the New Hampshire primary. At the same time, Barack Obama’s score spiked downward.

In addition, the fine folks at Yahoo! report that on the day of the New Hampshire primary Clinton’s Buzz Score among New Hampshire women spiked on primary day. (It’s scary that they know this information so precisely).

Obama originally led in searches among voters age 45 and older, but by primary day Clinton had a 15% lead over Obama.

If Yahoo's Election08 Political Dashboard is any indication, as of 8:28am EST, the winners will be :

• Barack Obama : His buzz track has gone up 14.2% for a 67% of all political searches.
• John McCain : By a razor thin margin given his searches have declined almost 20% while Romney's are up almost 8%.

Another predictor is online betting. Over at William Hill's elections blog they're saying :

Bookmaker William Hill makes it odds-on that Clinton will win more or less half the states up for grabs (Hillary Clinton to win 8-15 states is a 4/7 shot). And virtually the same bet is available for Barack Obama (2/1) (4/7 to win between 7 and 12 states).

This means that anyone who fancies either candidate to strongly outperform the other across the country is guaranteed a good price. Obama to win 13-18 states is currently a generous-looking 7/2.

Eventhough betting sites like BoDog.com are giving Hillary Clinton the edge, online betting actually failed last year during the midterm elections : The odds last year said the Republicans would keep their majority in the Senate while the House would go to Democrats.

Which leaves me to agree that come August, we will be seeing a brokered convention.

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