Until the scientific national polls come out in a day or two, We the People are more or less resigned to relying on the analysis of the debate that pundits on cable news joyfully provide us.
Or are we?
FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) published the following compilation of online polls today. You may find the results surprising.
Looks like we do have a choice in who to trust. I guess it all depends on who or what you think is more credible: the tv punditocracy who have more or less either ignored or marginalized Bernie Sander's iconoclastic campaign every way they could, since the day he announced -- OR -- an aggregate of unscientific online polls results gathered by a website whose self-appointed mission is to hold the media accountable.
I know which one I believe.
Although these polls only represent the views of these sites’ visitors who volunteered to participate, the consistently high share saying that Sanders prevailed in the debate, across a range of websites with wildly varying audiences, is striking.
Adam Johnson, associate editor at AlterNet and frequent FAIR.org contributor, pointed out (AlterNet, 10/14/15) that not only had Sanders won every online poll “by at least an 18-point margin,” he also was picked as the winner by various media-convened focus groups: “Sanders won the CNN focus group, the Fusion focus group and the Fox News focus group; in the latter, he even converted several Hillary supporters.”
Sourcing...
Last Night's DKos post-debate poll
Slate’s online poll
Time’s web poll
MSNBC’s poll
Drudge Report's Poll
KSWB-TV, Fox’s San Diego affiliate's Poll
The Street, a financial news website's Poll
Believe who or what you want to believe. But there's one thing for sure...
There's a significant disparity between what cable news is telling us -- and -- what poll participants on the internet are saying.