Predicting Election Results from Twitter Using Machine Learning Algorithms

Abstract

Introduction: In the present scenario, the social media network plays a significant role in sharing information between individuals. This incorporates information about news and events that are presently occurring in the worldwide. Anticipating election results is presently turning into a fascinating research topic through social media. In this article, we proposed a strategy to anticipate election results by consolidating sub-event discovery and sentimental analysis in micro-blogs to break down as well as imagine political inclinations uncovered by those social media users. Methods: This approach discovers and investigates sentimental data from micro-blogs to anticipate the popularity of contestants. In general, many organizations and media houses conduct a pre-poll review and obtain expert’s perspectives to anticipate the result of the election, but for our model, we use Twitter data to predict the result of an election by gathering information from Twitter and evaluate it to anticipate the result of the election by analyzing the sentiment of twitter information about the contestants. Results: The number of seats won by the first, second, and third party in AP Assembly Election 2019 has been determined by utilizing Positive Sentiment Scores (PSS’s) of the parties. The actual results of the election and our predicted values of the proposed model are compared, and the outcomes are very close to actual results. We utilized machine learning-based sentimental analysis to discover user emotions in tweets, anticipate sentiment score, and then convert this sentiment score to parties' seat score. Comprehensive experiments are conducted to check out the performance of our model based on a Twitter dataset. Conclusions: Our outcomes state that the proposed model can precisely forecast the election results with accuracy (94.2 %) over the given baselines. The experimental outcomes are very closer to actual election results and contrasted with conventional strategies utilized by various survey agencies for exit polls and approval of results demonstrated that social media data can foresee with better exactness. Discussion: In the future, we might want to expand this work into different areas and nations of the reality where Twitter is picking up prevalence as a political battling tool, and where politicians and individuals are turning towards micro-blogs for political communication and data. We would likewise expand this research into various fields other than general elections and from politicians to state organizations.