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TIME Politics 2014 Election Can Wikipedia Predict the Elections? Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes holds a mailer she asserted to be an illegal voter intimidation tactic as she rallies her supporters during a stop at the United Auto Workers hall in Bowling Green, Ky., Monday, Nov. 3, 2014. J. Scott ApplewhiteAP Your move, Nate Silver

You can almost picture it: The voter picks up the voter guide or maybe even an absentee ballot sits down at his or her computer and gets ready to decide the crucial Senate race. First stop: Wikipedia.

Yes, the community-edited online encyclopedia is hardly the most thorough (or fair) source of information on political candidates, but its not a bad start. (Hey, weve done it, and were professionals.)

So what does it tell us about the crucial Senate fights? A look at traffic statistics on Wikipedia over the last 30 days (using this website, which seems authoritative enough) seems to give a little more hope to Democrats than you might expect.

Now, keep a few things in mind. Nate Silver, the nerd king of big data prediction modeling, gives the Republican Party a 74.4% chance of taking the Senate. Lesser-known third-party candidates typically dont have Wikipedia pages, while incumbents often have had them for longer than previously unknown challengers.

And the types of voters who look up candidates on Wikipedia may not be representative of voters overall.

All that said, heres which candidates in key Senate races were looked up most on Wikipedia over the last month.

Arkansas

Tom Cotton (R) 14,899

Mark Pryor (D) 12,327

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Can Wikipedia Predict the Elections?