Just in time for the highly unpredictable Alberta election, Hill+Knowlton Strategies has updated and rebranded its interactive election predictor tool.
Election Quarterback was launched last week in Alberta and will be available until election day on May 5. It was previously called Election Predictor and was last used in the 2014 Ontario election.
The tool allows users — or, as the firm calls them, “political junkies” — to predict and share voting outcomes and to see the effects potential changes in popular support could have on the election on a riding-by-riding, regional or provincial basis.
“It’s one of the most accurate election projection models that is publicly-available,” says Corey Hogan, director of engagement strategies at H+K in Calgary.
The election predictor looks at incumbency, past results, trend lines and other statistics to determine where parties are most likely to gain or lose votes based on the percentages that users enter. It can also be used to calculate what effect changes to the popular vote have on the number of seats a party obtains.
By doing so, it differs from other prediction models that take the popular vote percentage and simply apply it uniformly province-wide, Hogan says.
Participants can share their choices on social media, with Facebook emerging as the sharing tool of choice, rather than Twitter “where there’s a shyness factor.”
The election predictor was built in-house and “is really highlighting an expertise that I don’t think a lot of people realize we have.”
As of early this week, Election Quarterback had been used by 2,000 people, but Hogan expects its audience to jump in the last weekend before the election. That’s what happened in Ontario last year, when the election predictor garnered about two-thirds of its usage.
It attracts a great audience for a public relations firm that’s looking to stand out and attract attention and potential new clients, he says.
Current opinion polls show Alberta’s election is a toss-up, with the long-reigning Conservatives at risk. However, opinion polls in the 2012 Alberta election, which came to the same conclusion, proved to be inaccurate.
H+K plans to use Election Quarterback in the upcoming federal election and in other provincial elections.
