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Saturday, March 28, 2009

Can Wikipedia Predict Who Will be the Next Indian PM?

Manmohan Singh, Mayawati, Sharad Pawar and LK Advani have all been in the news as potential candidates for the next Prime Minister of India.

Their popularity in the offline world may ebb and flow on a daily basis. What about their popularity in the online world? One way to compare the leading contenders online popularity is through Wikipedia. The graph below provides a thirty day snap shot of Wikipedia searches for the leading PM contenders. If you go by the wikipedia barometer, Manmohan Singh is leading the pack with Mayawati and Sharad Pawar closely following him. As for LK Advani, even though he has a pretty extensive website, his fortunes in the online world in terms of Wikipedia searches seems to be non existent.

So this begs the question:
"Will the popularity of the leading PM contenders judged by the number of wikipedia searches translate into any significant electoral gains for their respective coalitions?"

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