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