isidewith.com and the results on twitter

[elana i am]

hey all
it's been a couple years since i last posted here. i had to give up following politics for a while because it was negatively affecting my well-being. but bernie vs. hillary has piqued my interest, so i poked my nose back in here and i have something to say that might or might not be of interest to you.

my sister sent me a link to this isidewith.com poll a month or so ago and i've been watching people post their results on twitter by doing a search each day for "isidewith".

has anyone ever seen any articles, studies or any other information about twitter being a truly authentic and reliable barometer of a political trend? one that could possibly even predict a frontrunner? or is twitter more of a microcosm that doesn't really translate to the real 3-d world?

the reason i ask is because there are two very distinct frontrunners in the isidewith.com results being posted by twitter users. for democrats the results are bernie, then hillary and that's pretty much it. there have been no o'malley or webb results that i can recall and jill stein has not been added to the poll yet. for repugs it's marco rubio, rand paul and ted cruz.

aggregate results would be bernie by a large margin, a two way tie between hillary and marco rubio, then a large margin followed by rand paul and then ted cruz.

my thoughts on this are...
1) trump is supposedly drawing big crowds, but i think i've only seen maybe one response for him as a result on the isidewith.com poll. weirdness. 2) there seem to be a lot more responses from liberals than from conservatives. 3) that i'm happy to see overwhelming bernie and democratic results, but does it have any meaning other than maybe conservatives skew older so they don't post on twitter or do isidwith.com polls?

[ruffburr]

1. I took the survey -

A couple days ago it came up Bernie 99 percent match, At the time I thought it was pretty cool I had no idea that it would actually become such a big survey, participation wise , So now I'm a bit more impressed with it, If you haven't done it,Do it.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Maybe only folks on the left are passing around the website?

That's kind of the way I think politics should work, though. You should tell the voting booth how you feel (eta: ie, stand on various issues), and it should show you who you 'match', THEN let you make your choice. That would at least give the low info folks SOME idea of how they're actually voting for people who don't represent them at all, and maybe change a few voters minds at the last minute.

[pacalo]

3. All polls should be written that way.

If a simple 'yes' or 'no' won't do, other options are provided by clicking "other stances" & you can also choose to provide an answer in your own words.

I side 96% with Bernie Sanders, 83% with Hillary Clinton, & 70% with Martin O'Malley.

My stances are not even close to any Republican candidate.