Every scientific poll we’ve encountered so far suggests that voters thought Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in Monday night’s debate. In fact, some of them showed her winning by a wide margin — wide enough to make it a good bet (though not a guarantee) that she’ll gain in horse-race […] Read more »
Memo: Fox News VP reminds staff that online debate polls ‘do not meet our editorial standards’
A Fox News executive sent a memo to television producers and the politics team on Tuesday afternoon reminding employees that unscientific online polls “do not meet our editorial standards.” Dana Blanton, the vice president of public-opinion research at Fox News, explained in the memo obtained by Business Insider that “online […] Read more »
Why You Shouldn’t Trust ‘Polls’ Conducted Online
On Tuesday morning, Donald J. Trump boasted of what he described as widespread approval of his performance in the first presidential debate with Hillary Clinton. Those so-called “final debate polls” consisted of readers on news sites who were asked for their opinion of who had won. While it looked good […] Read more »
No matter how garbage the poll, if it shows that Donald Trump won the debate, he’ll endorse it
Before the first presidential debate was over, my colleague Aaron Blake noticed an unusual ad on The Washington Post’s website. “Trump won,” it declared in large type. “Contribute.” The timing was awkward, but this wasn’t necessarily an abnormal response from a campaign: Our guy did great, ignore the haters. Trump […] Read more »
Clinton Won The Debate, Which Means She’s Likely To Gain In The Polls
Democrats woke up on Monday to a spate of bad polls for Hillary Clinton, which brought Donald Trump to perhaps his closest position yet in the Electoral College. They had reason to go to bed feeling a lot better. Clinton bested Trump in the first presidential debate according to a […] Read more »
A Debate Victory Doesn’t Ensure a Real Shift in the Race
It might have been the most watched political debate in history, and the emerging consensus among pundits and the instant polls is that Hillary Clinton prevailed over Donald J. Trump on Monday night. … Will the result change the race? There’s no way to be sure of how the polls […] Read more »