Future WIindows Phone Assistant Could Be Conducting Election Polls

Microsoft has launched a survey website that lets users share their opinions on politics, sports and culture. Called Microsoft Prediction Lab, the site additionally serves as a forerunner to a future version of Cortana, the Windows digital assistant, that could poll users via their cellphones.

Polling analysts are keeping an eye on Microsoft's plan to put a pollster in each Windows phone as the industry transitions away from conventional methods like landline phones. Response rates for questions polled through landline phones has fallen from 36 percent in 1997 to 9 percent in 2012.

"The field is in a state of flux--everyone in the profession recognizes that there are a lot of challenges to our traditional methods," said Scott Keeter, director of survey researchof the Pew Research Center, as quoted by theTimes. "I think this kind of experimentation is overdue."

Microsoft has been collecting data to predict the outcomes of sports matches including the World Cup and NFL games; eventually, the company wants to poll people on presidential elections and hot-button political issues such as how the U.S. should confront the Islamic state.

Besides predicting outcomes, Microsoft wants to document how opinions change over time by encouraging users to vote over and over.

"The polls track the sentiment of the people who are answering the poll at the time," Microsoft researcher David Rothschild said in a statement. "My forecast predicts what will happen on Election Day. Clearly, the sentiment of the people at the time of the polls is a critical component on any forecast of Election Day, but not the only one.

"Not only did we match the accuracy of major polling companies," Rothschild said while waiting for the results of the Scotland's recent vote for independence, "but we also provided a lot of insight that they weren't able to get, through the fact that we had people coming back again and again."