Yes, Bernie Won Every Poll On the Internet. Hillary Still Won the Debate.

[wyldwolf]

Shortly after the first Democratic primary debate ended, I took to the pages of Slate to share what I saw on the CNN stage: Hillary Clinton had won. “Instead of turning in the safe and solid performance she needed,” I wrote, “Clinton was closer to spectacular on Tuesday night.”

It didn’t take long for the dissenting opinions to come pouring into by inbox... several of the messages did pose a question worth addressing: How was it possible that I could declare Hillary Clinton the winner of the debate at nearly the same time so many Slate readers were casting their votes in our online poll for Bernie Sanders?

So, what gives? Were my fellow journalists and I watching a different debate than everyone else?

Let me start with the polls. As I explained after the first GOP debate when there was a similar difference in opinion between the chattering class and online respondents, instant online polls are informal and unscientific. The results rely on a self-selecting group of respondents with no regards to political affiliation, age, country, or even whether the person doing the responding actually watched the debate. Respondents, meanwhile, don’t have even the slightest motivation to be objective; it’s hard to imagine a Hillary supporter casting an online vote for Bernie or vice versa, regardless of what they saw on stage. Like tracking new Twitter followers or Google searches, the online surveys provide an interesting snapshot of the mood of a particular slice of the Internet, but they’re mostly for entertainment (for the reader) and traffic (for the outlet). No one should mistake them for the scientific surveys done by professional pollsters.

They also tend to favor those candidates with active and impassioned fans—something that Bernie’s fundraising numbers and campaign crowds suggest he clearly has in spades. When Slate and a number of other established media outlets declared Hillary the winner, we gave that same fan base—which has long felt, not unjustifiably, that their man’s not getting a fair shake in the media—one more reason to reload the page and vote again. In online polls, like elections, it’s all about turnout. In online polls, unlike elections, you can vote as many times as you want.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/10/14/bernie_won_polls_not_the_debate_hillary_won_the_debate.html

[JDPriestly]

1. Wrong. Bernie won. Here's why.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251681349

[wyldwolf]

2. Wrong. Bernie lost. Here's why.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251683732

[sibelian]

5. Thaaaat's just a link to this OP, wyldwolf.

? What are you doing?

[wyldwolf]

6. And his link was just biased DUer's opinion

[sibelian]

8. And yours is what?

Go and find me an opinion from some conversation on some aspect of the human condition that isn't "biased".

What backs it up?

[wyldwolf]

11. Facts on Internet polling

[sibelian]

13. There's no way of establishing whether self-selection obscures the real picture.

As you do not actually know the identity or political orientation of any of the contributors to online polls you are left in the position of having to assert that you do in order to pretend your positions is based on facts. It is possible that the online polls being presented here are weighted because Sanders supporters are more likely to vote in online polls. How does that explain the CNN poll? Did only Sanders supporters watch it? How can you claim that Clinton supporters would not also vote in the online polls hosted by CNN? If you're suggesting that Clinton supporters don't vote in online polls it starts to look difficult to assume that they'd vote in anything, to be honest.

Online polls come in a wide variety of levels of reliability. We can simply dismiss them all, I suppose, in which case there is no need for the poll option here on DU.

[Dawgs]

23. I don't think you know what "facts" mean. n/t

[TheKentuckian]

21. You are a neutral observer? Get real, you are aggressively pro Clinton and long

established as such.

That is of course just fine but pretending someone else's opinion is moot because they are biased creeps toward a breakdown in intellectual honesty if not right through and past such into some other territory.

[stone space]

3. The focus on personalities is kind of missing the whole point.

The real winner of this debate is socialism. (With immigrants a close second.)

And the real loser of this debate is the NRA.

Capitalism and Guns are no longer the Trump cards that they used to be.

[wyldwolf]

4. True but another big issue is...

Progressive poll truthers and science deniers. In 2012 Republicans denied the polls that had Obama ahead end it was a major source of amusement on the left. Now the left is engaging in the same behavior.

[stone space]

7. The election is a self selected poll, with its own built-in errors.

What will the weather be like on the night of the Iowa Democratic Caucus here?

Any poll that seeks to replicate the errors inherent in the Iowa Caucus (as with any other election process), for example, would need to accurately model the weather here in Iowa on Caucus night.

I'm not convinced that we have the science yet capable of doing that this far out.

[wyldwolf]

9. But much less so than Internet polls

Voters have to meet certain criteria - age, location, citizenship and in many cases party affiliation. And, of course, a voter gets one vote.

Internet poll takers can be any age, in any part of the world, of any political persuasion or party. All they need is a computer. And they can vote more than once. Additionally you don't even have to be human to vote in Internet polls. Bots can be written to vote in Internet polls. Someone on DU got banned once for doing that very thing.

Comparing Internet polls to scientific polls and elections isn't very logical.

[madokie]

17. not in 85 to 15

or 75 to 18 as I've seen both numbers. Even if there was some shenanigans going on it wouldn't account for that kind of a difference.
At this point it doesn't matter as we're months before a vote is cast. A lot of people are just now finding out who Bernie Sanders is. Hillary on the other hand has been running since bill walked into the oval office. You'd be naive to not know or understand that.

[mythology]

22. There was a poll on msnbc.com that showed 85%

Wanted to impeach Bush. Find one real scientific poll that showed anything close to that.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=110x9869

Online polls are worthless.

[DanTex]

10. That's tantamount to arguing that unless we can predict the exact temperature in 2050,

then climate science is useless.

Of course we can't predict the exact outcome of any election. What we can do is give useful estimates of the opinions of the electorate, using random sampling, demographic weighting, etc. This produces a scientific estimate. Internet polls, on the other hand, are decidedly nonscientific. Ignoring the difference between an internet poll and a scientific poll is silly. And so is pretending that there is no such thing as a scientific poll because it can't predict things with 100% accuracy.

[stone space]

12. No, not really.

Nobody is going to take the weather on a single given night in 2050 and use it to determine the global climate for the next 4 years. Climate doesn't work that way.

But people will take election night polls, with all of their inherent errors (including the weather on caucus night!), and use it to determine who runs the country for the next 4 years.



We don't choose our public officials from a scientific poll.

If you have ever been to an Iowa Democratic Caucus, you'll find that it is utterly unscientific, and there is no attempt at adjusting the numbers to account for the errors.

In fact, the campaigns go out of their way to introduce error by selectively encouraging their supporters to attend.

[DanTex]

15. Nobody uses surveys to determine who runs the country. They have actual elections for that.

The purpose of surveys is to estimate how the population feels about certain issues. And, by and large, the surveys do a pretty good job. Scientific surveys, that is, not internet surveys. But people claiming that the opinion of the "people" is represented by internet polls are foolish.

[stone space]

16. Elections ARE surveys.

They have actual elections for that. The purpose of surveys is to estimate how the population feels about certain issues.

They just happen to be officially backed surveys that are used to determine who holds various public offices.

But they are still surveys, even if they are not particularly "scientific" (whatever that would mean!).

[DanTex]

19. Yes, that's true, but they aren't phone surveys or internet surveys.

But they are still surveys, even if they are not particularly "scientific" (whatever that would mean!).

Your screen name suggests that you have studied math, so surely you understand how scientific surveys work, and how they are different from self-selected internet polls.

[sufrommich]

25. How many times can one person vote in an election?

You can't clear your cookies and vote over and over again. If you're a republican,you also would throw your vote away by voting for a democrat,if you aren't an American citizen,you wouldn't be able to vote. I can't believe you see no difference between online polls designed to get clicks used for advertising revenue and real elections.

[stone space]

27. Depends on the person, doesn't it?

How many times can one person vote in an election?

Kelli Jo Fowler voted once. But had she not voted at all, that would have been a source of error in the final tally.

I Was Arrested for Voting

11/07/2014

By Kelli Jo Griffin at 12:01pm

On Election Day in 2013, I took my four children with me to watch me register to vote and cast my ballot in a city election in my small town in Iowa. Earlier that day, my daughter's class learned about the meaning of democracy and the importance of elections.

Two months after I cast my ballot as a civics lesson for my daughter, the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation agents parked across the street from my house, questioned me, and eventually arrested me and charged me with voter fraud.

Let me explain: When I was convicted on a nonviolent drug charge in 2008, my defense attorney told me that once I served my probation, I would regain my right to vote automatically – correct information at the time. But Gov. Terry Branstad suddenly changed the rules in 2011, and now all citizens with a felony conviction lose their voting rights for life. Our Secretary of State Matt Schultz, in fact, has made this subversion of democracy a point of pride. He has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hunting down and prosecuting people with past convictions who unknowingly registered or cast a vote.

Including me.

I explained that I did not know about the rule change, but the local county attorney insisted on prosecuting me, spending thousands of taxpayers' money to try to send me to jail – away from my husband and young children for up to 15 years. Knowing that I had not committed a crime, I withstood the crippling expense and emotional roller coaster of a trial instead of accepting a plea deal for a crime I knew I did not commit. Finally, three months later, I was acquitted by a jury of my peers. It only took them 40 minutes to come to that decision. I cried with relief as I heard the verdict.

snip-----------------------

https://www.aclu.org/blog/voting-rights/i-was-arrested-voting

[Cosmocat]

34. Please

NRA the loser?

I hate the scumbags a passion, ur you are living in a fantasy world if you think a few candidates taking shots at the jackasses in a democratic debate in any way changes its status as the most influencial poltical lobbying organization in this country ....

[bigwillq]

14. I won.

Just being silly.


I only saw a few clips, and I thought both Bernie and Hillary did well. I think they both won.

[madokie]

18. Hillary was more polished I agree

but the substance of the debate was Bernie all the way. Its his campaign that is setting the tone in this primary, not Hillary's. And in that Bernie won hands down.
This is going to be a horse race down to the very end I have a feeling. I also don't think Hillary can get the votes in the general to beat out whoever the pukes wind up with. She's too polarizing

[Art_from_Ark]

24. I agree on all points

[Kentonio]

20. Counter-intuitive though it seems, they both won.

They both won because they were playing completely different games, with strikingly different agendas.

Clinton was playing the traditional debate game and in that respect she performed excellently. Although she wobbled several times, she was confident, believable and on PP she let loose the most potent side of her character, the passionate social progressive fighter. Anyone going into the debate with a positive or neutral impression of her would probably come away feeling more positive, which for a front-runner leaking support is a great result. Her problem is that very few people have a neutral impression after all these years of front page attention, so she's unlikely to have gained much new support.

Sanders meanwhile was there for name recognition and to combat the media bogeyman of him being a radical socialist with extremist views. Although he started slowly and had a pretty uninspiring first hour, he came into his own after that and did a good job of spreading the message that has been winning him huge support across the country so far. For him to play the traditional debate game would have been idiotic, he's running as a populist outsider who thinks the issues are too important to play political games. The post debate polls will be the test of course, but I saw nothing in his performance that should hurt him.

TLDR: Clinton is playing to shore up her base, Sanders is playing for name recognition and to attract disaffected Democrats. They both did their respective jobs admirably.

[ColesCountyDem]

26. Good answer, and welcome to DU.

We have virtually identical 'takes' on the debate.

[Kentonio]

30. Thanks

Glad to be here.

[thesquanderer]

28. His article is half right

He is correct in pointing out the pitfalls of self-selected online polls. You have to take them with lots of grains of salt.

But I think he is wrong in implying that his personal take on who won is any more accurate. He is a sample size of one.

Who won will ultimately be determined by "real" polling, both about who won, and in how these candidates' numbers move post-debate.

[catnhatnh]

29. Slate:

"Yes are readers said that, but our readers are full of shit."

[Cosmocat]

31. Hillary "won"

Because she did a solid job and there was nothing that occurred to "hurt" her a d Bernie did a solid job, but nothing happened to give him any kind of real boost.

Thats the bottom line.

The "polls" are skewed to Bernie because his supporters were ALL tuning in and WANTED so desperately for something to happen.

Yeah, the establishment Ds and MSM want Hill and declared her the winner after a break even performance, but that is what Bernie has been facing all along.

[reformist2]

32. Hillary did better than expectations, but she did not win. That's nonsense. She was just average.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

33. Hey, remember, Al Gore won the 3rd debate

then a few days later he lost it.