Bing, Google make predictions about Super Tuesday's winners - CNET

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The hunt for the next US president will take a big step toward becoming a two-person race after Super Tuesday, online-search results say.

At least one caucus or primary will be held in each of 12 states, and the team at Microsoft's Bing is among those predicting that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will be the big winners of the day, giving each a leg up on securing the Democratic and Republican nominations, respectively.

In addition to using search queries, Bing says it arrived at the predictions using "machine-leaed predictive models" that also take data from polls, prediction markets and social media posts. So far, Bing has correctly predicted seven of the eight primary and caucus results, missing only Ted Cruz's narrow victory in Iowa.

Bing predicted in a blog post Monday that the two leading candidates will each win all but one of their contests on Tuesday. Trump is seen winning 10 states but losing to Cruz in the latter's home state of Texas, while Clinton is seen winning 10 while losing to Beie Sanders in his home state of Vermont.

Google searches also have done a pretty good job of predicting Republican winners so far this year, without even factoring in data from polls, social media or other sources. Check out the breakdown below to see how search volume for each of the candidates on the evening of the New Hampshire primary almost perfectly mirrors the results: