Life Imitates Virtual Reality

Move over Gallup Poll—Facebook.com is the new election oracle, accurately predicting the results of nine out of 12 races last week.

But the Web site’s new “Election Pulse” also had a few “Dewey Defeats Truman” moments. For example, an independent candidate for Texas governor, Kinky Friedman, won 66.9 percent of the Facebook vote—but garnered just 13 percent at the polls.

Facebook’s new “Pulse” feature allowed members to support candidates by visiting profiles and clicking a button, much as users can “friend” others.

The Web site highlighted closely contested Senate races in Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.

In every one of these races, the majority of Facebook users supported the Democratic candidate. Although Facebook does not claim to be a reliable predictive tool, its members got their way in all but Tennessee, where Democratic candidate Harold E. Ford Jr. lost to Republican Bob P. Corker.

Candidates could edit their profiles created by Facebook administrators, said employee Brandee Barker.

Virginia’s Senate winner, Democrat Jim Webb, listed “Faith, Family, Country” as his interests, while the wall of Ohio’s winner, Democrat Sherrod Brown, was filled with birthday wishes from college students.

Senate candidates who posted content on their profiles averaged 2,429 supporters, while those who did not had only 429, according to Christine B. Williams, a Bentley College government professor.

This pattern also held true for gubernatorial candidates.

Facebook lists Fox News as its election results provider, and shows how the online and actual votes compared.

In Virginia’s race, which would ultimately give the Senate to the Democrats, 57.06 percent of Facebook users supported Webb. Last week’s election yielded Webb 49.6 percent of the vote.

In four of six governorship races highlighted by Facebook, users also supported the Democratic candidates. Those races were Arizona, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Only in Texas and Michigan did user choices not correspond with the actual results.

Dick M. DeVos, the Republican candidate for governor in Michigan, was the only Republican among these races who received a majority of the vote from Facebook participants, with 50.4 percent. But Jennifer M. Granholm, a 1987 Harvard Law School grad, bested him by more than 10 percentage points.

Election Pulse also let users join groups to show their support for hot campaign issues. Those with the most support were “Reduce the Drinking Age to 18!” (131,919 supporters) and “Legalize Same-Sex Marriage” (98,930).

Turnout of young voters—those between ages 18 and 29—jumped from 20 percent in 2002 to at least 24 percent in 2006, according to preliminary data from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, based at the University of Maryland. That increase was powered by at least 2 million more youth voters.

“Young people are at the vanguard of new technology and they are the hottest new voters,” said David C. King, associate director of the Institute of Politics and lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government. “Facebook is going to be a very important tool for campaigns moving forward.”

Though young voters—like Facebook’s users—overwhelmingly supported Democrats, their support may simply be a reaction to the war in Iraq and disillusionment with Washington, King said.

Leaders of Harvard’s top two political clubs said that Facebook’s data should be taken with a grain of salt.

“I think Facebook is a good barometer of the national climate in a lot of ways,” said Harvard College Democrats President Eric P. Lesser ’07. “Any survey where the response is voluntary and is self-selective isn’t going to have any predictive value, but what it does show is that the young people are overwhelmingly favoring the Democratic Party right now.”

Mark A. Shepard ’08, vice president of the Harvard Republican Club, also warned against evaluating Election Pulse’s data at face value because of its self-selecting characteristics.

“The people who tend to be Democratic are liberal, northeastern elites, and that pretty much describes the group of people on Facebook,” he said.