During the 2007 Australian federal election Vquence analysed videos that were published on YouTube and elsewhere in relation to the federal election. Vquence provided different data to the iPrime federal election site , including a widget with user-generated videos related the federal election, a widget with party-created videos, and a graph that tracked view counts. This post is only about the graph, because this graph has essentially predicted the outcome of the federal election. Here it is.
The graph shows the development of the cumulative view count of the videos that were published by the main political parties in Australia over the last 2.5 months before the election in 2007.
At first you will notice that Labor started far above everyone else. Unfortunately we didn't start recording view counts that early, but we assume it is due to the Kevin07 website that was launched on 7th August .
In the graph, you will notice a first increase on the coalition's view count on the 2nd September - that's when Howard published the video for the APEC meeting 2-9 Sept 2007.
Then there's another bend on the 14th September, when Google launched it's federal election site and we saw first videos of the Nationals going up on YouTube.
The dip in the curve of the Nationals a little after that is due to a software bug withe some of YouTube's data.
Then on the 14th October the Federal Election was actually announced and you can see the massive increase in view count from there on for all parties, ending with a huge advantage of Labor over everybody else.
Interestingly enough, this also mirrors the actual outcome of the election.