Donald Trump's Win was predicted by IIT Kanpur before US Polls. Find Out How!

A team of data scientists from IIT Kanpur had predicted the victory of Republican candidate Donald Trump in the US Presidential Elections six days prior to the results. In a scenario where analysts were quite certain that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton will win by majority, these scientists from the prestigious IIT Kanpur were sure that Trump will emerge as the winner.

Sure of their model, the scholars sent a formal invitation to President Donald Trump to honor the college and be the chief guest at IIT Kanpur’s Annual Technical Festival as the President of United States. The invitation was sent on November 3.

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Sanjeev Newar, Founder, 4Front Analytics, IIT Kanpur, said that various statistical methods, simulations and machine learning techniques were used to derive the victory scenarios for each candidate. The statistics led to the conclusion that Trump will win the US Presidential Polls. The situation could only have reversed if 230 million US voters had decided to change their minds in a rush.

Newar informed that their team performed sentiment analysis on social media data that was collected by them from various pro and anti-groups of both the camps, so that they could reach an accurate result. He further added that the key focus of their research was to focus on comments and reactions to extract hidden patterns that the voters don’t usually reveal in poll samplings, especially if they relate with the candidate’s strong sentiments.

According to the models prepared by the team Trump was supposed to win with a range of 280 to 310 and nothing less than that. This was one of the reasons that they invited Trump for one of the largest Asian Technical Festivals.

Dr. Mainak Das, Faculty Coordinator, Techkriti 2017, IIT Kanpur, said that they took a huge leap of faith and initially it was a risk as their analysis was against every prediction on US elections. He further added that since the model prepared by the team was so reliable, they decided to go ahead with the move.

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4Front has been working in its best capacity to provide cloud-based big data and analytics solutions to business organizations. Dr. Deepu Philip, faculty of smarts systems and mentor to 4Front Analytics, IIT Kanpur, said that the group has been successful in collecting and analyzing data accurately by keeping aside personal biases, extracting hidden patterns and build cross-validations.