Last month, Microsoft launched its Bing 2016 Election Experience, with the aim of providing "clarity and insight for a better understanding" of this year"s race to the White House. Today, the company has announced that it is using its Bing prediction engine and machine-learning models to attempt to identify the winners of the upcoming caucuses and primaries before they"ve been selected.
As Microsoft explained today:
In an early preview, Bing Predicts is calling Donald Trump to win all four of the February GOP primaries and caucuses, while Hillary Clinton is predicted to take all but New Hampshire, where we see Bernie Sanders winning. The BPI [Bing Political Index] shows where each candidate stands on the key issues, while predictions will appear in the Elections Center alongside live results starting February 1.
Microsoft has broken down its projected results even further, as you can see on its blog post today. For example, in Iowa next week, Hillary Clinton is predicted to get 50.1% of the vote, beating Bernie Sanders into second place with 46.8%. On the Republican side, Donald Trump is projected to win with 39.8% of the vote, which would give him a comfortable victory over Ted Cruz, in second place with 30.5%.
In the New Hampshire primaries on February 9, Sanders (58.4%) is forecast to beat Clinton (40.5%), while Trump is predicted to win the Republican vote by a significant margin, with 40.2%, leaving Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich far behind, with around 12-13% of the vote each.
The Bing team emphasizes that it will "regularly revisit and revise these predictions as changes in public opinion change the likelihood of certain outcomes".
It"s worth pointing out that Microsoft has pretty good form when it comes to predicting election results. In the 2014 mid-terms, the company succeeded in accurately predicting over 95% of those who were elected.
Source: Bing Blogs