Tag Archives for elections

How New Media has Revolutionized Electoral Politics in the US

This paper [pdf] addresses the impact new media tools have on different segments of the electoral process in the United States. Specifically, it looks at  the impact new media has by providing information, influencing the news cycle and setting agendas, shaping public opinion, providing more fundraising opportunities, increasing political participation and youth voter turnout, and changing election results. This paper does so by drawing on systematic studies, data from the Pew Research Center, and case studies, specifically that of the 2008 Presidential Election. This analysis is unique in that it uses very current information, focusing on the 2008 election, as this was the first election in which new media was fully integrated into campaign strategies. It is also unique in that it analyzes several types of new media including social networks, blogging, campaign websites, and Internet fundraising. These findings suggest that new media does influence and shape the course of the electoral process in the United States through the six aspects of the electoral process presented in this paper.

Aronson, Elise D. (2012) “Cyber-Politics: How New Media has Revolutionized Electoral Politics in the United States,” Colgate Academic Review: Vol. 9, Article 7.

SurveyMonkey is inviting survey respondents to help predict the results of the next presidential elections in the US. Looks like an oversimplified version of prediction markets (pdf) for elections. For those who don’t know it, Marquis de Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, over 200 years old, was the starting point for all of this.   

EU Profiler: voting advice application for the 2009 EP elections

(originally posted here)

Here’s a link to a video about the EU Profiler, a Voting Advice Application for the 2009 European Parliamentary Elections.

http://www.euronews.net/en/article/27/02/2009/an-orientation-tool-for-eu-voters/

The EU Profiler has been developed here at the European University Institute with the collaboration of a unique team of international researchers.

A bit more about the EU Profiler:

The EU Profiler is a Europe-wide Voting Advice Application (VAA) or a party profiling website for the European Parliament elections in June 2009. It is designed to help millions of European users and potential voters to discover their positions in the political landscape for the 2009 EP elections.

In order to help voters to make their own preferences explicit and position themselves in a ‘European political landscape’, the EU Profiler offers the users (or voters) an online questionnaire with 30 political statements on which they can indicate their level of agreement or disagreement. When they have completed the set of questions, the programme goes on to state which particular party is closest to the political preferences expressed by the user (voter). Therefore, the EU Profiler allows them to compare their preferences with the positions of all national, as well as, all European parties.

The EU Profiler will be available in all EU Member States in all their respective national languages and will be customized to each country’s national campaign context. The EP elections will also be simulated in a number of non-EU member countries such as Turkey, Croatia, Switzerland and Norway.

The EU Profiler has been developed by the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence which has a unique position to form an international team of social scientists (as the ”officers” of this group and many more). The EU Profiler combines the academic excellence of the EUI with the expertise and the experience of the Dutch company ‘Kieskompas’ and the Swiss consortium ‘NCCR Democracy/Politools (smartvote)’ which are the two leading developers of party/candidates profiling websites and voting advice applications.”