I recall when on the Cutler Panel into innovation being presented with lots of ‘sentiment analysis’ on the content of submissions – all 700 of them!

I was rather sceptical of what could be got out of them.  But I expect this is a more legitimate use of such techniques – which is some machine that scans twitter and other social media and tracks how things are going for the leaders. I only came upon the site yesterday and so with yesterday’s and today’s readings (today’s is around -20% for Abbot and +20% for Gillard) I’ve got the impression the latter is smoothly out-performing the former.

But it’s a more complicated picture.  Anyway it does seem to confirm that the Coalition’s early campaign management is in disarray – and/or my own observation that Julia is a smooth operator.

This may well be like the 1996 election. If Julia wins it, if I were a Coalition supporter I’d be pretty dispirited.

Anyway, who knows, it’s early days.