In September, the Netherlands will be allowed to vote again. Will the upcoming election campaign finally go down in history as the campaign in which social media made its definitive breakthrough? In this sixth part in the series on the role of social media in the upcoming elections, we will look at how the outcome of the elections can be predicted using the 'wisdom of crowds'.In the previous part we saw how social media could be an important indicator for predicting the election results. Another way to predict the results is via so-called 'decision markets' or 'prediction markets' . These are markets where (virtual or real) money can be speculated on - in this case - the outcome of the elections. There are many types of decision markets, ranging from the stock exchanges (what is a company or country worth?) and the chance that an American Football team will win, to the winners of the Oscars. Decision markets would be a good way to predict the (uncertain) future.
The idea is simple: don't ask people what they're voting for, but ask them who they japan telegram data think will win and what their neighbors are voting for. Then let them bet money on this, so that they do their best and bet more, the more convinced they are of their right. That way, the winner will come to the fore.
James Surowiecki is a great advocate of decision markets. He sees them as one of the important ways to unlock the 'wisdom of crowds'. He 'proves' this with the fact that the stock price of the company that had supplied the part that caused the disaster with the space shuttle Challenger , went down. The 'crowd' has all kinds of information about the company and this 'wisdom' comes to the surface via the decision market.