With the World Cup 2018 just a week or so away, it is time to start carrying out the first of what I will like to call my scientific polls. The plan is to host a range of prediction polls on Twitter and see just whether the might of social media can get things right when it matters and where better place to start than at World Cup Group A 2018.

The first of the eight groups and more importantly sixteen polls that will be carried out before a ball is kicked were surveyed across Sunday and Monday via my Twitter account with the first question being that of who will top at World Cup Group A 2018.

Firstly thanks to the 87 people that voted, of those two-thirds exactly reckon that Uruguay will top the summit of Group A while it is an even split between Russia and Egypt, this throws up the first interesting point or perhaps even anomaly.

Ultimately this means that one pick or at least half a pick will be incorrect as they both cannot top the group, that said you would imagine that it is the race for second place where these two nations will pick up the most votes – more on that later.

Saudi Arabia picked up 7% of the votes, now in fairness, there is no way to really police the votes so you have to take into account people spoiling the ballot as it where, unfortunately, it is what is and will have to go with it, where it 77% then there would be more of a concern

We actually picked up more votes here than with the group winners poll, to be fair that’s no real problem, and more importantly thanks to the 118 votes that were logged. We cannot say that each vote came from an individual person but we have least picked up a total of 205 votes so far.

The logic here is that the country that topped the group winners poll should not do so in the runners-up one and that is exactly what has happened here. Uruguay earned 18% of the vote while Russia topped proceedings with 39%, four more than that of Egypt. While Saudi Arabia again picked up the slack, whether 8% of voters actually believe this can be argued.

If the people who voted for Russia are correct then 46 people will have picked correctly, what the purpose of these group stage polls will be twofold, a) just how many of the 16 polls were predicted with the right choice and b) we can then work out a percentage split of correct voters and incorrect voters.

From there we can then build this up as the tournament continues with individual fixtures and also knockout polls, so a lot more to work with as the data flushes through. Once again thanks to all my voters this time around and also for reading, this conclusion this recap of the Group A data.

If you have any requirements then please feel free to contact Dan or visit his website Real Football Data.

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