The use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI), fake pro­files, and paid blog­gers may have skewed the pub­lic’s per­cep­tion of who is ahead in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, but po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts in­sist that while these tools may shape on­line chat­ter, they do not re­place sci­ence.

They may not be will­ing to tell the pub­lic who is win­ning or what the ground is re­al­ly say­ing just yet, but ac­cord­ing to sea­soned poll­ster and po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Derek Ram­samooj, AI does not trump da­ta.

“In pol­i­tics, the so­phis­ti­ca­tion of po­lit­i­cal mar­ket­ing via mes­sag­ing would per­haps give an il­lu­sion of what the pop­u­la­tion is think­ing. We have all seen where me­dia can shape im­ages by a head­line, by pic­tures on the front page.”