Debate Polls Prove Trump Can Spit Out Nonsense And Still Win Over Viewers
Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won the debate on Monday night — according to the internet.
Monday night marked the first official presidential debate of 2016, featuring the Republican and Democratic candidate going head-to-head on a stage at Hofstra University in New York. Lester Holt was the moderator.
If you've ever taken a stats class, chances are, at some point, you were taught that there are a variety of ways in which you can manipulate data to show whatever answer you want to see.
One of the best ways to do that is to pick out a specific set of people to answer a question the way you want it answered.
So let's take that idea to the debate. After a debate ends, people tend to ask this: Who won?
Thinking rationally, if you ask a bunch of die-hard Democrats who won the debate, they're going to say the Democrat did. Likewise, if you ask a bunch of die-hard Republicans, they're going to say the Republican won the debate, even if he looked like an asshat of a tantrum-throwing child.
And so it was with Monday night's debate.
A bunch of news organizations ran online polls asking who won the debate. Predictably, the more conservative organizations' polls had Trump winning, while the more progressive ones showed Clinton as the victor.
(Internet polls are also notoriously easy to manipulate, as we kids know.)
As of Tuesday morning, CNBC had Trump ahead with 67 percent of the votes.
Time had Trump edging ahead with 54 percent of the vote.
Fox News got a little more in-depth with Trump winning at 50 percent and no one winning at 15 percent.
Slate ended up with Trump winning the poll.
He was at 55.18 percent on their online poll.
As for us, Elite Daily readers voted Clinton the clear winner.
An official CNN poll also ended up with Clinton winning the debate.
CNN/ORC ran a poll of debate viewers on Monday night. They found that Clinton was the winner of the debate with 62 percent of voters who watched the debate. Twenty-seven percent said that Trump was the winner.
This is just your reminder that you have to get your own information.
Data — especially informally collected data from the internet — is often biased.
If you want to know who "won" the debate, watch it and decide for yourself who came out looking like someone for whom you'd feel more comfortable voting.
SHOCKER: The internet isn't always completely objective. Sometimes you need to get information by yourself.
