Announcing ElectionVine: Distributed Presidential Elections

June 27th, 2007

This morning on Newsvine, on Mike Industries, and on thousands of blogs across the world, we launched ElectionVine.

ElectionVine is a giant distributed polling system designed to gauge the momentum of the U.S. Presidential race through the eyes of the independent internet and blogosphere. While traditional polling methods are carried out by single organizations, ElectionVine is entirely in the hands of site owners like you.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Head to electionvine.com and get your personalized poll code. You can customize what your poll will look like so it fits the colors of your site and even personally endorse a candidate if you’d like.
  2. Place your poll code in the sidebar of your site or blog and watch the votes come in.
  3. Check your own site’s political breakdown right from within the poll itself or on the ElectionVine Leaderboard.

Cumulative vote totals on the ElectionVine leaderboard will continue to rise up until the presidential primaries, but users’ votes will reset every month, allowing you to essentially see an entirely new set of data every 30 days.

The coolest part of ElectionVine, however, is that once you’ve voted on one site (say, Techcrunch), your vote will automatically count on any other sites you happen to visit thereafter (say, Mike Industries).

The dream of ElectionVine is to collect the most distributed view of how the election is shaping up online, and for that, I ask the assistance of you, faithful Mike Industries reader. We’ve provided two quick, unobtrusive methods of embedding, via a standard embed tag and via the newly developed WEDJE javascript method.

So head on over to ElectionVine and set up your polling place today. The country and The Vine thank you!

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17 Responses:

  1. Gil Creque says:

    What a fantastic idea Mike!!

    #1 - June 27th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
  2. Devon Shaw says:

    It’s a fine accomplishment from a technical perspective, but you run a serious risk of having it all undone by the likes of organized groups like Free Republic or MoveOn, who specifically target online polling and overload it to patently false degrees. The only thing this will ultimately measure is the persistence of strong advocates who target online polls — and there are many of them.

    You’ll know more when the first 30 days of data rolls in, but when that time comes I’d suggest getting away from standard-fare polling (Which only really works with a preset sampling base) and more towards interpretive results, since internet-based results are far more dynamic.

    #2 - June 27th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
  3. Adam says:

    Excellent! You and the newsvine guys/gals just keep on getting it right!

    #3 - June 27th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
  4. markus941 says:

    What an awesome and innovative idea. Are you planning on putting out a facebook app version of this too? That might really help spread it.

    #4 - June 27th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
  5. Don says:

    How long before Senator McCain has one of these babies on his very own Mike inspired myspace.com page?

    http://www.myspace.com/johnmccain

    Oh wait it looks like they might have actually made up their own template instead of using yours …

    #5 - June 27th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
  6. Adam Hobson says:

    I wonder if this poll will eventually show up on the homepage of any candidate…

    #6 - June 27th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
  7. Josh Stodola says:

    This is an absolutely superb idea!

    #7 - June 27th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
  8. Jeff Croft says:

    Very cool stuff. Rock on, guys.

    #8 - June 27th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
  9. Colin says:

    Those flash drop-down (drop-up) menus are so difficult to use.

    #9 - June 27th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
  10. Bryan Veloso says:

    Love the idea. Love the execution. Great job Team Newsvine! Hopefully the mainstream media catches sight of this and finally gets a clue about the demographics they’re missing.

    #10 - June 27th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
  11. Cory Duncan says:

    A different spin on the presidential election – vote by campaign logo on LogoVoting.com.

    Now if only someone would tell the candidates that DESIGN MATTERS.

    #11 - June 28th, 2007 at 9:30 am
  12. Mark J. says:

    Great idea! Although the flash-select-field’s scrollbar is hard to use.

    I just fear that there will be a general blue bias in this whole thing caused by those international voters (like me) who want to like US-Policy again someday ;) . Maybe you could show some numbers w/o the international voters?

    #12 - June 28th, 2007 at 10:17 am
  13. Kyle Warner says:

    I think this is an awesome idea, but I’m not sure how representative it will be.

    From what I remember, a large portion of those who actually vote are over the age of 50. This also seems to be the group least likely to take an on-line poll. Yet the age demographic least likely to vote in the actual election is the same group who will most likely vote in this poll.

    But none the less, GREAT IDEA!!

    #13 - June 28th, 2007 at 10:24 am
  14. Calvin Tang says:

    I’m a flip flopper. I’ve changed my vote at least 10 times already.

    #14 - June 29th, 2007 at 12:34 am
  15. Travis McCrea says:

    I am noticing a problem in firefox with this and how it interacts with my site..
    I have a “to top/to bottom” button on the side of my page, this strangly effects how my page is rendered but it doesn’t negitivly impact anything, just causes minor annoyances. However, after having your widget up, it would create a major line through the middle of your widget… I will put it back up if you want me to show you whats happening unless you already know by looking at my site.

    #15 - July 1st, 2007 at 2:21 pm
  16. Travis McCrea says:

    Stupid ;’s in css…
    Problem Fixed

    #16 - July 1st, 2007 at 11:18 pm
  17. Dave says:

    Its been a few days since the launch. I am wondering if you have spotted any signs of abuse by some organized campaigns to crank up the votes. Is the system designed to spot sudden large spikes in voting for one candidate.

    #17 - July 10th, 2007 at 10:55 am

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