Federal election 2019: Researcher predicts who will win

A data scientist who predicted Donald Trump would become US president believes Scott Morrison will hold on to power.

He made headlines when he predicted Donald Trump would become the next US president.

Now Professor Bela Stantic says he knows who will win today’s federal election — and his prediction may surprise you.

The Griffith University scientist believes Scott Morrison will remain prime minister, with the Liberal Party narrowly holding on to power.

That goes against most other polls that have predicted Labor will win. Labor is also short odds with bookies to form government.

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Prof Stantic analyses social media data and sentiment to form his predictions, accurately tipping who would win 49 of the 50 states in the US election.

Crunching the numbers at the Gold Coast university’s Big Data and Smart Analytics lab, Prof Stantic has thrown millions of tweets through his programs to find out what people have been thinking about and feeling this election.

The lab also predicted the Coalition’s win in the 2016 election and gave a clear indication “Brexit” would prevail, contrary to the polling before Britain’s referendum on European Union membership.

They did, however, get it wrong with the same-sex marriage vote in 2017, and Prof Stantic, along with colleague David Tuffley, wrote a detailed explanation as to why afterwards.

That study of opinions expressed on Twitter showed there could be a narrow defeat of the Yes campaign, with 49.17 per cent support.

As we know, 61.6 per cent of Australians were in favour and 38.4 per cent against same-sex marriage.

Prof Stantic has been running the numbers over the past few weeks but wanted to wait until the last days of the campaign to reveal his prediction.

He told news.com.au the data indicated Clive Palmer had been doing well on social media and that could help decide the election because of United Australia Party preferences going to the Liberals.

He said the Greens had been perceived negatively online by using primary school children to push their climate change agenda.

According to Prof Stantic’s data, the Coalition is still tipped to win, but its lead had shortened in the past week.

“The Coalition is losing the lead but it’s neck to neck,” he told news.com.au.

“Labor has South Australia and Victoria, but the Coalition is well ahead in Queensland and Western Australia, and New South Wales is basically a coin toss.

“It’s changing as we speak.

“Clive Palmer is still attracting significant sentiment.”

Professor Bela Stantic explaining how big data analysis works. Picture: Griffith University

While not everyone expresses their views on social media, Prof Stantic said his research had shown 5 per cent of social media data equated to a 95 per cent accuracy.

He said the two million tweets he analysed in just a few days made up a greater representation of people than polls of 1000 people.

He estimates the tweets equate to half a million people.

“What is now tricky is a significant proportion of votes have already been cast in advance,” he said.

“It’s changing very quickly. Both parties are working hard in the final days.”

Only public pages are accessed for the lab’s analytics.

After the same-sex marriage vote, the researchers noted the power of social media.

“The fact remains that people say things on social media that they would not say out loud,” they wrote for The Conversation.

“Many trolls and hecklers in the online world turn out to be mild-mannered individuals in the real world. It can be surprising.”

They argue it’s this person — the private type who vents their feelings on social media — whose opinion determines the outcome of social issues.

Prof Stantic said people were likely to be more honest when telling friends things online than answering polls.

“It is scary how accurate prediction can be done by analysing social media,” he said after predicting Trump’s win.

“Such analytics can provide much more accurate information than telephone polling, especially in a day and age where people have caller ID and don’t have landlines.

“The amount of data that all of us generate is truly staggering, and it is continuing to grow. This publicly available data is secret treasure of information if we know how to discover it.”