I asked the question a few weeks ago: What's an election without an election predictor?
And with the Ontario election campaign officially getting underway today, so too have we launched the Ontario Election Predictor (with some new and exciting special sauce. So read on).
As with previous versions, we continue to add some bits and pieces to give it more of a social flavour. This includes:
- The ability to blog your prediction
- A blog hosted by my colleague and fellow blogger, Meghan, who will provide regular updates on the campaign trail and how digital and social media is being used (or abused).
- A Google Mapping function so that you can showcase your predicting skills and see those of others (simply register and save a prediction)
- Finally, and perhaps most interesting from this practitioners perspective, we're giving users the choice of platform to save and share their predictions: from the site itself or from a rather novel mash-up with Facebook (click here to access the Predictor App).
We hope that we have the right ingredients and, as always, the right formula, to build on past successes. Granted the re-distribution of ridings did add a degree of complexity, so we can only hope the algorithm can withstand all the messiness that created (here's how we dealt with it). Don't hesitate to send us any thoughts and recommendations.
So, once again, into the breach! Now we just need to figure out what we can do to up our game for the next Federal election - Fantasy Politics anyone? Bueller?