May 14 – India’s national elections have now been completed, and as one would expect with over 700 million voters, the results will take a little while to come in. In total, about 62 percent of registered voters turned out, probably up from the 57 percent that voted in the last elections. Interestingly, turnout was highest in areas that have been unsettled, such as Jammu and Kashmir, with a 5 percent increase in votes cast over 2004. So, who’s going to win?

We can either wait patiently until May 16th, when the official results are declared, or we can get scientific about it – and use a bit of old fashioned Indian mysticism.

Our friends over at Bhopu are true internet geeks in the nicest possible way, and they’ve been using a bunch of Google analytics data to make predictions. Styling themselves “SEO Astrologers,” Bhopu use a variety of online resources to try and predict outcomes of events, based on a number of different criteria: Google Trends, Web Search Volumes, Technorati. It’s all clever stuff, and you can read what they have to say about who is going to win the Loksabha here.

Good enough to put bets on? Two days to find out…