Tag Archives: Mccain

by Michelle Lentz

I’m not. I’m voting for Obama but according to a Facebook test I just took, my personality traits are more like McCain voters. I’m still sorting out how I feel about that, other than I have never found myself to be “scrupulous.”

Signal Patterns, developers of scientific-based social web applications “that characterize and connect people in meaningful ways,” released a new application, called Election Patterns, that matches personality traits to voting patterns. You can take the survey on Facebook and get your answers quickly.

The Election Patterns application reveals the personality traits and voting preferences of voters, whether Republican, Democrat or Independent, and shows each voter how they compare to composite groups of other voters. For example, a user’s personality traits could reveal that he or she is actually more like McCain voters and yet the user is voting for Obama or vice versa. Users can also compare their specific personality traits to see if they are similar or different in being realistic, introspective, creative, scrupulous, or astute, just to name a few traits, when compared to Obama and McCain voters, or more general, other Republicans and Democrats.

How does it work? At the core of the Election Patterns survey is the trait-based “Big Five” personality theory with an in-depth 45-score psychological assessment algorithm. The application shows how personality traits relate to political, and in particular, candidate preferences. I’m still not sure I buy it.

Past research says that people are most likely to vote for the candidate with whom they most relate to – the candidate most like themselves.

At the end of the survey, you can choose to have your election patterns anonymously submitted. Those results will be aggregated with others and, over the next three weeks, Signal Patterns, will issue Election Patterns qualitative findings, such as:

What issues are most important to Democratic voters?
What are the personality traits of an Undecided voter?
How do Obama and McCain Voters’ personalities differ by age and gender?
Which group of voters are more creative, level-headed and intellectual, McCain voters or Obama voters?
How are the voters in Pennsylvania different from those in Ohio?

As with any Facebook app, you can add a personalized Election Patterns badge for display on your Facebook profile page or blog. Based on my results, I’m passing on that option. If anything, it’s an interesting little quiz that takes less than 5 minutes of your time and does not seem to automatically install anything on your profile page, which I appreciate.

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Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology. You can also catch Michelle presenting on Twitter at the upcoming DevLearn ’08 in San Jose.

by Michelle Lentz

That’s a rather high-falutin’ title for this post, really, especially when you consider it’s following Bacon Man.

That said, we all know the Web is playing a bigger role than ever in this year’s Presidential election. Although I’m trying not to get to emotionally involved in the election this year (that didn’t work out for me 4 years ago), I have been playing with a few web sites out there. Interestingly, a lot of the sites are through Google.

Google Maps Election Gallery: I’ve made my own Google maps before, usually of wineries. This takes that interactivity to a new level. There is a collection of maps, including Obama’s life journey, McCain’s life journey, locations of election-related Tweets, primary results, fundraising, and so forth.

Google Maps Voting Locations: This little widget is incomplete as of yet. By mid-October, the folks at Google will have loaded all the relevant information and let you know where your polling booth is located. Right now it will provide you with voter registration information.

Google Mobile Election Info: When you’re on the go and you just have to know the latest, you can check out Google Mobile’s Election page, specifically set up for mobile browsers. (http://m.google.com/elections) The site provides search results for both Obama and McCain, as well as mobile maps, YouTube, and more.

Google PowerReader: This use of Google Reader is an almost overpowering amount of information from the top political journalists and the campaigns themselves.

Electoral-Vote.com: Yep, a non-Google site. I can’t decide if this is a new site or the same one I followed, almost religiously, back in 2004. The site keeps you abreast of, well, a little bit of everything. You can see red states, blue states, and almost red and almost blue states as well as follow Senate and House races. Posts at the bottom, from the Votemaster, keep you up to date on just about everything happening politically.

Twitter Debate Graph: I find this fascinating. Twitter has created a graph of the spike in tweets during specific times in the recent Presidential debate.

Also a strange source of endless fascination, the Twitter Election 2008 site, showing a constant stream of tweets containing keywords such as election, Palin, Obama, McCain, Biden, and more.

Of course, I haven’t covered all the helpful sites out there, and I haven’t begun to mention the countless (countless!) political bloggers out there. What sites are you using to help track the election?

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Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology. You can also catch Michelle presenting on Twitter at the upcoming DevLearn ’08 in San Jose.