Elections’ Epilogue: What Have We Learned?

First the good news: a MAD of 1.41 Gets the Bronze Medal of All Polls!

The results from the Flemish Parliament elections with all votes counted are:

Party	Results (source: Het Nieuwsblad)	SAM’s forecast
Christian democrats (CD&V)	20,48 %	18,70 %
Green (Groen)	8,7 %	8,75 %
Flemish nationalists (N-VA)	31,88 %	30,32 %
Liberal democrats (open VLD)	14,15 %	13,70 %
Social democrats (SP-A)	13,99 %	13,27 %
Nationalist & Anti-Islam party (VB)	5,92%	9,80%

Table1. Results Flemish Parliament compared to our forecast

And below is the comparative table of all polls compared to this result and the Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) which expresses the level of variability in the forecasts. A MAD of zero value means you did a perfect prediction. In this case,with the highest score of almost 32 % and the lowest of almost six % in only six observations  anything under 1.5 is quite alright.

Table 2. Comparison of all opinion polls for the Flemish Parliament and our prediction based on Twitter analytics by SAM.

Compared to 16 other opinion polls, published by various national media our little SAM (Social Analytics and Monitoring) did quite alright on the budget of a shoestring: in only 5.7 man-days we came up with a result, competing with mega concerns in market research.

The Mean Absolute Deviation covers up one serious flaw in our forecast: the giant shift from voters from VB (The nationalist Anti Islam party) to N-VA (the Flemish nationalist party). This led to an underestimation of the N-VA result and an overestimation  of the VB result. Although the model estimated the correct direction of the shift, it underestimated the proportion of it.

If we would have used more data, we might have caught that shift and ended even higher!

Conclusion

Social Media Analytics is a step further than social media reporting as most tools nowadays do. With our little SAM, built on the Data2Action platform, we have sufficiently proven that forecasting on the basis of correct judgment of sentiment on even only one source like Twitter can produce relevant results in marketing, sales, operations and finance. Because, compared to politics, these disciplines deliver far more predictable data as they can combine external sources like social media with customer, production, logistics and financial data. And the social media actors and opinion leaders certainly produce less bias in these areas than is the -case in political statements. All this can be done on a continuous basis supporting day-to-day management in communication, supply chain, sales, etc...

If you want to know more about Data2Action, the platform that made this possible, drop me a line: contact@linguafrancaconsulting.eu 

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on all levels of your organisation

BBI: Belgian Business Intelligence, an Oxymoron?

BI lessons from political storytelling.

The Belgian Federal Government is juggling figures to prove to their population they are implementing structural cuts on government spending. Not. It is a known fact that politics and Business Intelligence don’t go together. If nobody in the cockpit shares ideas about the causality of things and nobody shares objectives with the others than you have a political situation where BI can only be abused for the various agendas in the coalition.

Have a look at the stats from the Belgian National Bank:

Year	Revenue	Revenue Index	Spending	Spending Index	Nominal GDP
2009	94.9	100	102.7	100	100
2010	97.9	103.1	109	106.1	104.1
2011	100.5	105.9	115.9	112.9	108.6
2012	109.5	115.6	115.7	112.7	111.1
2013 (budget)	112.1	118.1	122	118.8	113

Table: Federal Government Income and Spending

The explanation from the present coalition is hilarious: we are implementing structural cuts and  only because of the endless government formation talks in 2010 the budget derailed.

It is true that in 2010 spending rose but relative to GDP growth it climbed lower than in 2011 and in 2012, a massive increase in taxes and excises combined with a freeze on spending reduced the gap a bit. But over the entire period –where the same political coalition was at the helm of the Belgian Titanic- expenditures grew with 18.8% compared to GDP growth of 13 % and taxes also exploded with 18.1%. Telling the people and the EU authorities that Belgium is in control of its budget is not quite the truth…

The problem with this story is the Belgian press (excluding the financial press) who is repeating and reprinting this PR message without any critique whatsoever.

This shows that figures need the right story to convey the message to the audience because if people, even trained communication experts like journalists, can choose between a narration or a table filled with figures, they’ll go for the story.

Remember that when you explain the figures to your management.