Introducing http://www.boards.ie/vote

Darragh

Could all of us on Boards.ie predict how the country will vote in the General Election?

Given the size of Boards.ie - 2.225 million unique visitors in January 2011, over 415,000 members registered, over 190,900 active, and over 28,700 people having posted on the site over 128,500 times in the last 7 days - we thought it would be interesting to see just how accurate we could be.

We've put together http://www.boards.ie/vote to see just how this might work.



Our election simulator invites all Boards.ie members to place a vote as they will in the General Election for candidates and parties. Only Boards.ie members can use the site.

You can vote for your candidates, decide to spoil your vote or just let us know you're undecided. We'll total the votes in the same way as it will be in the General Election (the Droop quota method and the Single Transferable Vote system of Proportional Representation) and update the results every hour.



We'll also be allowing people to check the Latest National Results and see who's doing well in their local constituency.

Coupled with our general election discussions and other innovations we hope to introduce , we're hoping this will remind people of the importance of having a vote and using it.



WHERE HAS ALL THE DATA COME FROM?

The simulator went live at 16:00 on Friday 4 Feb, 2011. We've been testing out our first go at this with our moderators over the last couple of days. All of our information is public information, uploaded with thanks to TheJournal.ie

HOW ACCURATE IS IT?

While we hope it will be fairly representative, we are realistic in terms of accuracies. Some Boards.ie members who vote in this may not actually be eligible to vote in the actual election.

We also know some people may go to the trouble of registering duplicate accounts to game the system. We'll do our best to monitor the site and identify offenders, but because this is the first time we've done this, it's difficult to predict what the results will be.

IS MY VOTE PRIVATE?

Details of your votes or preferences are NOT available to any members, moderators, Administrators or the Community Managers of Boards.ie, nor to any political parties, partners, advertisers or affiliates.

It will not be recorded on your public profile. It is recorded in our database in the same way as PM's and Private Forum messages, only accessible by our technical team.

HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU?

We'd love to hear any constructive feedback you have. If you need to contact us, just post below or drop us a line at hello@boards.ie and we'll do our best to help.

If you spot any errors or omissions, please let us know here.

Your support, help and input is appreciated

NSNO

Okay.... this is brilliant

Sir Oxman

Hi Darragh, great idea!

One thing though, at the moment I can vote in mine and then go and vote in Mayo if I want, I know then the Mayo vote will only be counted but it would be more realistic to lock each member to their initial constituiency which in all likelihood, would be their actual constituency.

Anyway, nice idea.

Degag

Nice one!

gerrycollins

watch the media use this all the way to the election

mikemac

Looks great

dilallio

Fantastic idea and well designed application.

looksee

This is a brilliant idea, and I am very glad to see the candidates in my constituencey displayed as they will be on the polling card. I will go through their profiles and make a more informed decision than I usually do!

Sir Oxman

enda1 wrote: »

Couple of points.

Constituency maps are wrong. I chose Dublin South and it highlighted all of Dublin county.

Secondly: The official ballot hasn't been finalised yet!!
This will basically screw up all you results and I suggest locking this vote thing until the ballots are finalised.

But it's open-ended, you can revisit your vote when the full lists are disclosed after Feb 9th.

ei.sdraob

Good work, congrats to the coders

Great idea Darragh, get the copyright on this quick before RTE start using it.

Quick question, how come this can be done up in no time and up and running on the Boards and the eVoting machines were a disaster lol.

davetherave

Great idea, but I agree gambiamans comment above. Would it be possible to lock or limit each user to their own constituency?

Just saw this message.

Revisit the site at any time to update your voting preferences, change your constituency, or just to check out the latest results.

Does that mean that, if I've already voted in my own constituency and I now vote in say Dublin Central will this erase my Kildare North results from the db?

Pauleta

Brilliant idea

enda1

gambiaman wrote: »

But it's open-ended, you can revisit your vote when the full lists are disclosed after Feb 9th.

Yeah but who will?

Seems a bit foolish to me. I think it's better to wait until the real lists are out. But hey, its a nice idea anyway, quite well implemented.

Carroller16

lethal

Asphyxia

Great idea I've just voted

Hogzy

Sinn Fein has 10% :eek:

Im scared now!!!

mewso

davetherave wrote: »

Does that mean that, if I've already voted in my own constituency and I now vote in say Dublin Central will this erase my Kildare North results from the db?

Only your last vote counts which is a good idea imo. You can change your mind as many times as you like or simply flip between FF and FG constantly just like the real electorate.

Corsendonk

What about the Boards voters abroad??? Do they get to vote?


Great Idea

RachaelVO

I just did it, what a class plan! I would imagine it would be pretty accurate too. Brilliant!

witnessmenow

RachaelVO wrote: »

I just did it, what a class plan! I would imagine it would be pretty accurate too. Brilliant!

It wont be that accurate at all I'd imagine! The strongest voters (old people) wouldn't make up many boards members!

RachaelVO

witnessmenow wrote: »

It wont be that accurate at all I'd imagine! The strongest voters (old people) wouldn't make up many boards members!

Yeah, good point, didn't think of that one! DOH

At least you're encouraging all boards members to register to vote (very responsible). If everyone actually used their vote it could really shake up the political parties!

Darragh

Thanks for the feedback and the corrections folks. Will pass all those on and get errors fixed as soon as possible.

VampiricPadraig

Done.

NEXT!

thetonynator

Ye prob know already, but it doesn't seem to work on mobile. . . Or else my mobile is just outdated!

seamus

Up to 1000 votes already, congrats guys!

Soldie

I ticked the "Show a badge next to my posts on Boards.ie" box, but I'm not seeing any badge next to my posts (or other uses' posts). Am I missing something?

Edit: Seems to be fixed now.

Brenireland

brilliant & enjoyable

Schorpio

Great idea imo! Has the potential to be waay more accurate than any opinion poll too.

+1 on locking voters to their constituency though.

Ludo

Brilliant idea and very well implemented..well done.

Schorpio wrote: »

Great idea imo! Has the potential to be waay more accurate than any opinion poll too.

erm...no, it will not be accurate at all as the demographic of boards.ie users in no way reflects the demographic of poeple who actually vote.

Good indication of the feelings of the 14-40 year olds in the country maybe but a very high percentage of them do not vote compared to older people.

It would be great if this were not the case but unfortunately it is.

mikegalway

Well done. This will turn out to be a very accurate forecaster.

Pal

Brilliant stuff. Congratulations

chucken1

Soldie wrote: »

I ticked the "Show a badge next to my posts on Boards.ie" box, but I'm not seeing any badge next to my posts (or other uses' posts). Am I missing something?

Edit: Seems to be fixed now.

I voted..great idea! I clicked the badge too but its not beside my name!
*EDIT*
Ahh..there it is!!!!

amacachi

chucken1 wrote: »

I voted..great idea! I clicked the badge too but its not beside my name!

Ahh..there it is!!!!

It's under your postcount for me.

bungler

chucken1 wrote: »

I voted..great idea! I clicked the badge too but its not beside my name!

Ahh..there it is!!!!

Great idea,well done lads

lord lucan

Great idea. Just a note to anyone using AdBlock+ on Chrome to disable it to allow you to vote.:)

Pal

Hope the gangsters who manipulate these things don't screw it up for all of us.
Muliple accounts. Peddling their party. You know what i mean.

Great idea Boards Team. Very enjoyable so far and I would like to see it work.

tommy21

Love it and being honest made me sit down and properly examine policies of candidates - didn't bother looking at Fianna Fail or Sinn Fein, but did mull over Labour vs Fine Gael vs Independents - I voted on the basis of how I agreed with their polices and plans, and to make life easier eliminated anyone without their own profile or website, as I think in this day and age you can't be effective without it.

Well done - nice to know what canditates in Cork are polling at the moment, at least among Boards.ie members.

TrinityPhD

One question and one suggestion

Question - How many votes will it take to move from the current results to the STV results?

Suggestion - You include either an option where people can say they are registered and intend to vote to give your results slightly more accuracy, or you include a dummy constituency so that people who live abroad/can't vote can register their opinions in some way without skewing the poll results.
Make it a Five seater, with three candidates from FG & FF, two from Labour & SF, 1 Green, 1 WP etc. and a few single issue candidates.

You could make the suggested candidates have generic profiles - sitting TD on front bench, back bench TD, counciller who's worked hard for the area for years, save our local hospital candidate . .

Dont be at yourself

It'd be nice for an 'abroad' constituency, not included in the national tally, but to see how the many emigrants would vote (even if only on a party basis)...

johnmcdnl

Have to say I'm pretty impressed with this and it really seems to work well..

one small addition would be a way to see how many TDs each party will as the vote stands..
I know the %s are there but it'd be nice to get a definite number of seats each party will have if the poll works out to be pretty accurate..


on the whole though I love the idea and can't wait to see how accurate it turns out to be

Nollog

Pretty nice work there.
10/10 hope you do this again next election too.

bastados

Thanks guys great idea..in Louth/Adams area here and had a look at results so far , not good , not good at all...not a fanboy of the armalite brigade.

Mr Velo

Great work fellas.
Vote in.

OfficeStuff

duh - didn't see the tickbox, heading off to do that. Absolutely brilliant, guys, well done. Dead impressed. That is one slick piece of work and is going to be invaluable. Well done.

Unregistered.

Dislike being able to see the polling results before casting a vote.

Sir Oxman

johnmcdnl wrote: »

Have to say I'm pretty impressed with this and it really seems to work well..

one small addition would be a way to see how many TDs each party will as the vote stands..
I know the %s are there but it'd be nice to get a definite number of seats each party will have if the poll works out to be pretty accurate..


on the whole though I love the idea and can't wait to see how accurate it turns out to be

I just did a quick tote and on 1st pref so far (I missed 4 somehow but anyway):

FG 63
Lab 51
SF 23
FF 5
ULA 4
Green 3
Ind 13


<just for anorak fun>

JP Liz V1

Excellent Idea all

Dr. Baltar

Holy Crap. Looks like a Lab/SF coalition is actually possible with help of the left and indies.

Nehaxak

Well done to Boards for putting all this together, jolly good show n' stuff.

Victor

hellboy99 wrote: »

Great idea Darragh, get the copyright on this quick before RTE start using it.

Quick question, how come this can be done up in no time and up and running on the Boards and the eVoting machines were a disaster lol.

A little off topic, but the problem with the e-voting machines was that there was no audit trail. While this mini-site isn't the most sophisticated, it doesn't have the level of responsibility of an actual national election.

davetherave wrote: »

Does that mean that, if I've already voted in my own constituency and I now vote in say Dublin Central will this erase my Kildare North results from the db?

I'm not sure if it erases them from the database, but certainly they don't count any more. I think it is hoped to have a method of determining the trends in the election, e.g. over time, there may be a definite trend of people moving from one party to another or candidate X might suddenly lose all his support after making a gaffe.

Hogzy wrote: »

Sinn Fein has 10% :eek:

This is largely consistent with polls by others. The problem for SF is that polls tend to overstate the percentage of first preferences they are likely to get and the number of seats.

Corsendonk wrote: »

What about the Boards voters abroad??? Do they get to vote?

They do, but only here.

NekkidBibleMan wrote: »

It'd be nice for an 'abroad' constituency, not included in the national tally, but to see how the many emigrants would vote (even if only on a party basis)...

Agreed. It has been suggested.

RachaelVO wrote: »

I just did it, what a class plan! I would imagine it would be pretty accurate too. Brilliant!

Schorpio wrote: »

Great idea imo! Has the potential to be waay more accurate than any opinion poll too.

The way this poll will be accurate is that is has the potential for tens of thousands to vote in it. However, it has the problem of being biased (the proportions of tge population of any given age, gender, location, economic status, etc. are different between boards.ie and the people that actually vote) and self-selecting (not randomised).

TrinityPhD wrote: »

Question - How many votes will it take to move from the current results to the STV results?

Ideally, you would like to get maybe 100 votes per constituency (perhaps 6,000 votes total), but I think they are just going to have to make a judgement call at some stage. Ignoring the bias and self-selection, 100 votes would give an accuracy of about +5% which is the type of thing you would need to start transferring votes.

Suggestion - You include either an option where people can say they are registered and intend to vote to give your results slightly more accuracy, or you include a dummy constituency so that people who live abroad/can't vote can register their opinions in some way without skewing the poll results.
Make it a Five seater, with three candidates from FG & FF, two from Labour & SF, 1 Green, 1 WP etc. and a few single issue candidates.

You could make the suggested candidates have generic profiles - sitting TD on front bench, back bench TD, counciller who's worked hard for the area for years, save our local hospital candidate . .

Agreed and already suggested, although you are perhaps over-doing it. But the idea is good.

johnmcdnl wrote: »

one small addition would be a way to see how many TDs each party will as the vote stands.. I know the %s are there but it'd be nice to get a definite number of seats each party will have if the poll works out to be pretty accurate..

I imagine this will come in time, however, the sample sizes need to be a bit bigger before one can get a meaningful indication.

gambiaman wrote: »

I just did a quick tote and on 1st pref so far (I missed 4 somehow but anyway):

FG 63
Lab 51
SF 23
FF 5
ULA 4
Green 3
Ind 13

<just for anorak fun>

I realise its a guesstimate, but some parties tend to be over-represented and other under-represented relative to their first preference percentages.