Website Lets Voters Predict Election

NFL pool not doing too well? Perhaps you should try your hand at predicting the 2006 midterm elections.

Earlier this week, two Harvard alums launched Predict06.com, a social networking website devoted to forecasting the outcomes in the coming midterm elections by having registered users make predictions.

Joseph K. Green ’05 and Andrew H. Golis ’05, who is a former Crimson columnist, created the website as an interactive platform designed to consolidate the vast amount of knowledge about the elections.

“The general approach has always been to look to experts in D.C. for predictions about the elections and we thought it would be really interesting to have people come up with them on their own and share them with their friends,” Golis said. In its first day, the website attracted over 300 registered users who made over 6,500 predictions.

“Prediction markets can be shockingly accurate, and so we are figuring out ways to encourage people to be accurate and not simply predict that their party will win,” he said.

In order to incentivize users to predict accurately rather than vote along party lines, Golis and Green said they plan to implement a pool system—similar to those used during March Madness—where users would be able to compete against their friends to see whose predictions are most accurate.

Green and Golis are no strangers to the realm of online interactive social media or politics. While at Harvard, Green took time off to work for the campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in Arizona and to found essembly.com, a non-partisan social networking site. He also worked on Facebook.com with his Harvard roommate, Mark E. Zuckerberg, formerly of the Class of 2006. Golis ran Cambridge Common, a campus politics blog.

As of Tuesday, the predictions on Predict06.com have favored Republicans sweeping the elections, Golis said, though he added that this may be due to the links to the website on a right-wing blog.

However, Golis said he expects the website to expand and provide more accurate predictions in the coming weeks before the election.

Golis called the website “an experiment in online social media,” saying that there were no plans to continue the website for the 2008 election.