TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Askitas, Nikos
        TI  - Predicting the Irish "Gay Marriage" Referendum
        PY  - 2015/Dec/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 9570
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp9570
        AB  - On February 20 2015 Irish Premier Enda Kenny confirmed that a "yes-no" referendum on same sex marriage would be held on May 22 of the same year. A yes vote would legalise same sex marriage in Ireland. As the Irish premier put it, the vote was about "tolerance, respect and sensitivity". The electoral outcome turned out to be 62.07% for the yes vote with voter turnout at 60.52% of the registered voters. Ireland thus became the first country in the world to legalise same sex marriage through a popular vote. Using hourly Google Search data one week prior to the Irish Referendum of May 22 2015 and a simple ratio of "vote yes" to "vote no" searches I demonstrate how the outcome could have been predicted on the nose. The method is used here successfully for the second time and is so far as I know the only one which forecasts popular vote with Google Search.
        KW  - referendum
KW  - predicting
KW  - Google Trends
KW  - Google Search
KW  - complexity
KW  - behaviour
KW  - data science
KW  - computational social science
KW  - complex systems
        ER  -