This week I’ve been conducting a number of fan polls in regards to seeing whether or not Twitter can correctly predict a winner when it comes to football matches. The first five have been matches that have taken place in international tournaments, those two being the FIFA Confederations Cup and the UEFA European Under 21 Championship

But now I’m trying a poll in a league game, with it being this time of the year there is not a great deal to choose from but I have opted to pick a Chinese Super League game, Jiangsu Suning and Shanghai SIPG have the honour of being the first two clubs to go head to head in my social media polls

Let’s take a look at what Twitter said in regards to a pre-match prediction

As you can see a favourable selection in the direction of Shanghai SIPG, with a 3:2 ratio for them to win (when adding the Draw and Jiangsu together) so quite the overwhelming majority here but there is something more interesting here

That is because the odds were both the same for the two teams to win (13/8 for either side) and that means there can be no favourite bias this time around, so here my theory is that people have gone for Shanghai due to familiarity

But it may not even be down to familiarity about the club or how they are performing, in some cases it may just be down to the fact that voters have had of Shanghai as a city.

So in this instance it may not even be a footballing decision that has led to people voting for Shanghai, the sample size was 35. This is are second smallest sample size but that is not to be unexpected due to the teams in the poll, this also means that are average poll sample is 41, making this a below average sample size

Will Twitter get their first league poll correct, we will find out in a few hours time

Please feel free to follow me on twitter and join in the polls and if this website has bought you there then please do say hello, also if you want to contact me in regards to any football data work that you currently have available then you can email me at realfootballmanwordpress@gmail.com