US presidential election 2020 prediction based on Twitter data using lexicon-based sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis is a technique of analyzing public opinion on a problem. The presidential election in the United States is a hot issue that will affect various aspects of the world. The goal of this analysis is to forecast the outcome of the US presidential election and to compare these results with the actual results of the polls. The sentiment analysis used in this study is the lexicon-based sentiment analysis. The method used in this research is data collection, data preprocessing, data mapping and sentiment analysis. The data in this study were obtained from Twitter taken one week before the United States presidential election was held. The model used in this research is VADER sentiment analysis. The data cleaning mechanism in this study uses a method in text mining, where the data is first cleaned of various things that are not considered important in the analysis. Furthermore, the data that can be used as material for analysis is saved again to make it easier to read the data. In the analysis, tweets from users are mapped and counted by the state of the United States of America. The result of this research is a prediction for the Democratic Party to win 22 votes over the Republican Party which received 19 votes. The results from the BBC show that the Democratic Party won with 24 votes, and the Republican Party only got 20 votes. With these results, the VADER sentiment analysis model can produce predictions following the actual results of the US presidential election.

I. Introduction

The US presidential election was held on November 3, 2020. The election resulted in a victory for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. With these results, Joe Biden will become the 46th president of the United States. All of the applicants are directly elected by popular vote in most of the U.S. elections. The president and vice president are not directly nominated by the electorate. Instead of a system called the Electoral College, the electors are chosen. The process of using the votes shall be taken from the Constitution. It was a balance between a popular vote and a vote in Congress. [1], Therefore, the prediction process of the US survey institute is certainly different from other countries. One way to predict the outcome of general elections is by surveying public opinion. In recent years, social media has become an effective medium to accommodate public opinion on a problem that has occurred.