Tag: polls

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Trump Spokesperson: Unscientific ‘Polls’ Are Better Than Real Polls

Right Wing Watch reports on Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson’s appearance on a radio show today defending the accuracy of unscientific, online polls.

She also hints that Hillary Clinton does better in fact based polls because news organizations have a “vested interest” in Hillary becoming president.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson took a page from her boss and touted Trump’s performance in post-debate online polls that have no scientific accuracy whatsoever. After conservative talk show host Joe Pags told Pierson that “news organization polling” is tilted against Trump because media outlets “have some sort of vested interested in getting Hillary Clinton elected,” Pierson said that the scientific polls conducted by media firms are “skewed.” As proof, she cited the fact that the CNN sampled more Democrats in its poll of debate viewers. Three other scientific polls also found that most people thought that Clinton won the debate.

Pierson vigorously defended the accuracy of voluntary, unscientific online polls: “When you look at the online polls, these are people who are, like I said, not engaged in the day-to-day, 24-hour news cycle, watching cable news all day every day, these are just people. If you’re looking at Time magazine, if you’re on another website and they’re doing a poll and you vote in that poll, by the way, to the tune of over a million votes in some of these polls, that’s important, because those aren’t the people who are in it one way or another, a lot of those people are just engaging.”

You’ll note what Pierson doesn’t explain is the fact that with unscientific “widget” polls, a couple of thousand followers can “vote, refresh, vote, refresh, vote, refresh” to the tune of hundreds of thousands of votes, making it appear Trump had more support than he actually has.

As I reported earlier this week, Trump followers posted instructions on a Reddit board encouraging Trumpers to do just that.

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NBC News/SurveyMonkey Poll: Clinton Won 1st Debate Over Trump 52%-21%

According to a newly released poll conducted by NBC News/SurveyMonkey, 52% of respondents say Democrat Hillary Clinton won the first presidential debate this past Monday night over Republican Donald Trump. Just 21% said Trump came out on top.

Within her own party, Clinton strengthened her base among Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters view her with 50% saying their opinion of her changed for the better.

Only 26% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters felt Trump improved his standing among them.

When it comes to all-important Independent voters, two-thirds of those polled said their opinion of the two candidates did not change as a result of the debate. Sixteen percent said Clinton improved in their view, while 9% said the same about Trump.

In terms of “appearing presidential,” 53% of respondents said Clinton has the proper temperament to serve as president effectively, while 63% said Trump does not.

As noted by Chuck Todd this afternoon while reporting on these results, this survey is an actual scientific poll, as opposed to a “widget” or “instant poll” on a website trolls can vote, refresh, and vote again.

While Trump boasted about how he won several of those easily freeped online voting widgets, several scientific polls now show Clinton won the night.

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Fox News Memo to Hosts: Online Debate Polls Do Not Meet Our “Editorial Standards”

Sean Hannity (L), Donald Trump (R)

Dana Blanton, vice president of public-opinion research for Fox News, dashed off a memo yesterday instructing employees that unscientific “online polls” like the ones featured on Drudge and TIME “do not meet our editorial standards.”

I’m guessing the real news here is: Fox News hosts have editorial standards?

From Business Insider:

“As most of the publications themselves clearly state, the sample obviously can’t be representative of the electorate because they only reflect the views of those Internet users who have chosen to participate,” Blanton wrote.

As the Fox News executive pointed out, users who participate in such polls must have internet access, be online at the time of the poll, be fans of the website in question, and self-select to participate.

“Another problem — we know some campaigns/groups of supporters encourage people to vote in online polls and flood the results,” she wrote. “These quickie click items do not meet our editorial standards.”

At least three Fox News hosts cited unscientific online polls in the hours after Monday night’s presidential debate to suggest Donald Trump emerged as the winner of the political showdown.

Trump had come out ahead in a slew of unscientific polls, or polls in which the sample of participants did not accurately reflect the sample of viewers who watched the debate. Such polls are almost always discounted by professional pollsters and analysts.

The only scientific survey conducted in the debate’s immediate aftermath was the CNN/ORC instant poll, which showed that viewers thought Hillary Clinton handily defeated Trump. Respondents to a Morning Consult poll released Wednesday also said, 49% to 26%, that Clinton bested Trump in the debate.

Some Fox News hosts, like Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade, continued to tout the unscientific surveys in spite of the network memo.

It was discovered yesterday that over 70 of these unscientific “online polls” were swamped in a coordinated effort by pro-Trump trolls.

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Poll: Hillary Clinton Leads Donald Trump By +5 Heading Into First Debate

From NBC News:

Just hours ahead of the first 2016 presidential debate, Hillary Clinton continues to lead Donald Trump by 5 points, 45 percent to 40 percent, unchanged from last week, according to the latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll.

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson trails behind with 10 percent support, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein has 3 percent support.

In a two-way match-up without the third-party candidates, Clinton has a 7-point advantage over Trump, 51 percent to 44 percent. The margin is up from 5 points last week among likely voters.

Pundits have posited today that typically the candidate who leads going into the first presidential debate tends to win the election.

Not sure how useful that info is in this topsy-turvy election year, but there you go.

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Clinton And Trump In Deadheat In Colorado & Pennsylvania

Now, THIS concerns me.

From CNN:

Just one point separates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in two states that are critical to both candidates’ chances of becoming president, according to new CNN/ORC polls in Pennsylvania and Colorado.

In Colorado, likely voters break 42% for Trump, 41% for Clinton, 13% for Libertarian Gary Johnson and 3% for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Pennsylvania’s likely voters split 45% for Clinton, 44% for Trump, 6% for Johnson and 3% for Stein. Those divides are well within each poll’s 3.5-point margin of sampling error.

Colorado and Pennsylvania have been considered fairly solid for Clinton.

Super-stats guy Nate Silver has dropped Hillary’s current chances to 52%:

And RealClearPolitics “No Toss Up” map shows Hillary winning the electoral college with only 272 votes. No one wanted to see this get this close.

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New Poll: Pennsylvania Race For White House Tightens To Clinton +3

The latest Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll of Pennsylvania likely voters shows Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s lead over GOP billionaire Donald Trump has tightened to 3 points in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania.

This shows a loss of 6 points by Clinton to Trump in one week’s time.

When factoring third-party candidates, Clinton holds a 2 point lead, 40 percent to 38 percent. Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson garners only 8 percent support, and the Green Party’s Jill Stein has 3 percent.

The biggest factor in the tightened race is due to a jump of 85 percent of likely Republican voters in Pennsylvania supporting Trump, up from 71 percent in the last poll.

The survey is the result of polling 486 likely voters, with a margin of error of 5 percentage points.

These kinds of results are exactly why Clinton supporters need to not become complacent in some battleground states. For weeks now, pundits have called Pennsylvania fairly safe for Clinton.

That said, it’s important to not let one poll of less than 500 likely voters cause full-blown panic.

According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Clinton leads Trump in Pennsylvania by an average of 5.2 points, 46 percent to 40.8 percent.

The NY Times tracking poll for The UpShot shows Hillary having an 84% chance of winning the Keystone State.

And, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website shows Clinton with a 70% chance of winning Pennsylvania.

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Poll: 72% Of LGBT Voters Support Hillary Clinton

The latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll shows Democrat Hillary Clinton holds a wide lead when it comes to voter support in the LGBT community.

The survey indicates Clinton garners 72% of the LGBT vote compared to Donald Trump’s 20%.

Who the hell are these 20% folks? Seriously?

Not only has Trump wavered back and forth in regard to his support for LGBT issues, his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence, has a long history of supporting anti-LGBT positions and legislation. Among those dubious achievements are passing, then retreating from, a “religious freedom” bill in his state of Indiana which would have legalized LGBT discrimination.

Clinton still maintains a commanding lead when third party candidates Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are included in the poll. Clinton still receives 63% of registered LGBT voters support, while Trump drops to 15 percent support. Johnson almost ties Trump with 13 percent, and Stein follows down in single digits with 8%.

LGBT voters traditionally lean Democratic when voting in presidential elections. In the 2012 race for the White House, 5% of voters identified as LGBT to the NBC News exit polls, and of those 76% indicated they voted for President Obama.

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NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll Show Hillary Clinton Leading Trump +6

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Democrat Hillary Clinton heading into the first presidential debate with a 6 point lead over Republican Donald Trump.

From NBC News:

In a four-way horserace, Clinton gets support from 43 percent of likely voters and Trump gets 37 percent, while Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson is at 9 percent and the Green Party’s Jill Stein is at 3 percent.

In a head-to-head matchup without those third-party candidates, Clinton’s advantage expands to seven points, 48 percent to 41 percent. This is the NBC/WSJ poll’s first general-election poll of likely voters in the 2016 race.

The poll was conducted after her bout of mild pneumonia.

Sixty-eight percent of Hillary supporters say they will definitely vote for her; 66% of Trump supporters say the same of their candidate.

A majority of Hillary voters (50%) say their vote is for her as opposed to against Trump (44%).

Forty-one percent of Trump voters say their vote is more about supporting him than opposing Hillary; 51% of his supporters identify their votes as an “anti-Hillary” vote. 

The survey also shows President Obama’s approval rating at 52%.

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Poll: Hillary Clinton Opens 5 Point Lead Over Donald Trump

From NBC News:

According to this week’s NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll, Hillary Clinton now enjoys 50 percent support among likely voters and Donald Trump has 45 percent support.

In a four-way match up of likely voters, Clinton leads Trump by 5 points—45 percent to 40 percent. Libertarian Gary Johnson now has 10 percent support and Jill Stein maintains 4 percent.

Currently, 56 percent of likely voters think Clinton will win. Just 39 percent think Trump will win.