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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

The First Real Indicator Of Debate Results

After the presidential debate on Monday, there were a whole host of online "polls" in which people could vote for the winner.  In nearly every one of those polls, Trump won big.  Putting all of them together, more than five million people voted and Trump won by double digits.  There were also two instant polls that were supposedly "scientific".  One was taken by CNN and it showed a massive Hillary win.  The second also showed Hillary winning, but by a small margin.  These polls, however, were supposedly taken Monday night after the debate which leads one to wonder how many people who got called at one in the morning by a pollster actually answered the questions.  The CNN poll, for example, had a very flawed sample.  The respondents as a group already had Hillary 29% ahead BEFORE the debate.  No wonder that Hillary supporters thought she won.  It was like polling delegates to the Democrat National Convention as to whether they preferred Hillary or Trump.

Today, we got the first actual poll results.  The source is the LA Times poll which has an unusual methodology to be sure.  It polls the same group of nearly 3000 people in groups of 400 once per week. In many ways, it is like the country's biggest focus group.  Nevertheless, it does provide us with information about the trends in the race.  Today's figures showed that Trump increased his lead by 1%.  That may not sound like much, but since this is a tracking poll in which only 14% of the responses change on a particular day, it is major.  We've been told by the media ever since the debate that Hillary won.  That's wrong, at least as far as the American voters are concerned.

There will be many more polls, of that you can be sure.  Still, it's time for the media to stop its claims that Hillary won.  The reality is that the same pundits who told us that Clinton would crush Bernie Sanders easily, the same pundits who proclaimed Jeb Bush the front runner and likely winner, the same pundits who said Trump had self-destructed about fifteen times, the same pundits who proclaimed Rubio or Cruz or Ben Carson the likely winner are now telling us that Hillary won the debate.  At least they are consistent -- consistently wrong.

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