The startup company that correctly predicted the Brexit vote, based on a whole bunch of the web’s metadata, is now predicting Donald Trump will become America’s 45th president.
“Trump is dominating the campaign because he simply puts more stuff out there, and it’s his ideas, his policies, his outrages and apologies, his retractions and obfuscations, that continue to set the news agenda,” said Aaron Timms, Director of Content at risk analytics startup Predata. “It’s also apparent in the digital realm, where the contest — between the hyper-kinetic, impulsive, verbally libidinous Trump and the pragmatic, cautious, stage-managed Clinton — now comfortably favors the Republican. It’s suddenly starting to look like the election is Trump’s to lose.”
Predata’s latest report computes the “campaign scores” for Trump and Clinton by measuring the correlation of engagement with each campaign’s message online, to engagement with election-related material online. As of today, Predata gives Trump a digital campaign score of 89.3 percent to Clinton’s 15.8 percent. Trump’s campaign has dominated the digital world (with the exception for a brief time after the Democratic National Convention) since mid-July.
Predata collects the web’s metadata to put a number on the likelihood of a real world event happening. Before the Brexit vote in late June, when most pollsters and pundits were predicting the Remain camp would win, Timms said there was a message coming from the web that wasn’t reflected in standard polls.
After the metadata proved to be correct in that vote, all eyes are now on the Predata indicators with 45 days to go until the presidential election:
- Trump maintains significant advantage in headline digital campaign; now dominates both the “official” and “unofficial” online campaigns
- Digital race now practically even in the battleground states, reflecting the overall swing toward Trump in the polls over the last two weeks
- Trump’s energy on the trail — real-life and digital — and the activism of his online surrogates continue to be the decisive factor in the digital realm
- Electoral College math still points to a Clinton victory on November 8, but further digital gains for Trump in coming weeks will force a reevaluation of the odds
Monday’s first presidential debate could be a turning point in the digital world for both campaigns.
“If one of the candidates slips up in a major way—a gaffe, a gross factual inaccuracy, a loss of cool—that could become ammunition for the other side which, if deployed properly, may end up having a significant impact on the digital campaign in the race’s final weeks,” said Timms.