2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: MEDIA WATCH: WHY IS MEDIA COVERING UP WHO WON DEMOCRATIC DEBATE, ACCORDING TO POLLS? [View all]mythology
(9,527 posts)It's not honest to pass off unscientific polls that have a disclaimer telling you that they aren't accurate because they are self-selected and so have no controls for demographics as some way to verify anything. It's actually dishonest to be using those polls as a way to "prove" that Sanders won or the big scary media is trying to cover it up. It's dishonest because you either know, or should know, your evidence isn't actually proof of what you say.
Honesty is this - until there are multiple real scientific polls, there is no way to tell who won the debate. Neither the pundits nor the useless internet polls can actually determine which candidate(s) will rise or fall in the larger public's estimation. In theory a pundit should have some experience or specialized education to make their opinion more valuable than a random guess, but I haven't seen any studies on that over time. A non-random, non-weighted poll is meaningless because it's not representative of the universe of likely voters.