Title:	REDDIT SENTIMENT ANALYSIS TO IMPROVE ELECTION PREDICTIONS
Author(s):	Bryant Hwang
ISBN:	978-989-8533-92-0
Editors:	Ajith P. Abraham and Jörg Roth
Year:	2019
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Sentiment Analysis, Election Prediction, Social Media, Reddit, Aylien
Type:	Short Paper
First Page:	204
Last Page:	208
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	Despite high rates of past success, the majority of polling agencies were unable to predict the outcome of the 2016 United States presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Further research has hypothesized that these agencies underestimated the amount of support for Trump and overestimated the representation of recent college graduates. Sentiment analysis of posts on popular social media sites presents promising possibilities for better gauging public opinion. In our research, we analyze positive and negative sentiment in Reddit posts from key dates during the 2016 election that mention either candidate. The results of our study match the results of a poll conducted by the New York Times, which showed that public opinion for Trump tended to stay consistent while Clintons positive sentiment decreased over time. Our study also shows that public opinion expressed on Reddit changed drastically in accordance to major events, like debates and email controversies. Alone, our work in sentiment analysis does not produce statistically significant enough results to predict the final outcome of an election, but having the ability to gauge public opinion through social networks is a powerful way that polling agencies and researchers can strengthen their predictions in real time.
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