What The Bernie vs Hillary Debate Reveals About Online Polls
Who won the democratic presidential debate? Hillary or Bernie?
The internet is torn. Headlines from major media outlets claim a resounding victory for Hillary Clinton, but focus groups and online polls run by those same outlets tell a different story.
Every available metric, including Google searches, shows Bernie as the favorite on the night — so what gives?
What Does it Mean to Win a Debate?
All that matters in the end of any election are votes.
Candidates gather votes to their side by showing the public they agree on the same issues. Debates are designed to show the public how the views of the candidates compare, so that people can decide who they like the most.
So, one way to judge a debate is by who had the most correct and therefore, relatable position on the issues. That’s how the experts called the debate. The problem with that is subjectivity rules the less expert popular opinion. So, who decides on what’s correct and relatable?
Political experts and the media? Or, the people who vote?
Presidential debates are won by getting the American people, the voters on board, not the experts. But, they have to be the right votes.
In the biggest moment of the debate, Bernie captured everyone’s attention by sticking up for Hillary — including Clinton voters who could be swayed to his side.
Politico covered this moment well, with the Sanders campaign calling the Clinton emails the “intercepted pass” Bernie needed to reach Clinton voters to his side.
Inarguably, this moment got Bernie a lot of attention, but how do we know if it shifted the right voters to his side or not?
Media outlets ran focus groups, realtime social media polls, and embedded online polls to "find out".
In a CNN focus group after the debate, 10 people thought Bernie Sanders won vs the 8 that thought Hillary won. 2 of the people who raised their hands for Bernie also raised their hands for Hillary — not very scientific.
Fusion brought in the millennials, a dozen 18-to-34-year-olds, to see what they thought and that panel voted 8 to 3 for Sanders.
Fox News also ran a focus group of democratic voters from the key swing state of Florida, and they thought Bernie won the debate.
Trouble with these focus groups? Small sample sizes and questionable controls.
CNN’S Real-time Facebook Poll
To cast a wider net, CNN asked “the kids” on Facebook who they thought was winning the debate in real time.
All the responses were heavily in favor of Bernie Sanders — with the overall win given to Bernie — 75% to Hillary’s 18%.
What was missing from CNN’s real time poll? Shared data about the “kids” that voted.
What country were they from? What states did they live in? How old were they? Were they Republican or Democrat?
We all know this data is available in Facebook Insights, so why can’t it be applied to the poll?
Online Polls from Time & Slate
Bernie was also the overwhelming favorite in a number online polls — two of the biggest coming from Time and Slate.
The Time poll has 273,886 votes and Sanders with 59% of the votes and Hillary with only 12%. Surprisingly, Jim Webb is in second with 27% — surprising because focus groups and experts agreed he didn’t do so well.
The Slate poll, with over 97,000 voters, shows Bernie with 67% and Hillary with 15% — Webb also got 15% here, showing that people might like him more than we think.
What was missing from these polls and other online polls? Again, data about who voted.
During and right after the debate, we all relied on opinions from Washington insiders and the online results to tell us who won.
Politico reported that, “Clinton campaign officials also said they were skeptical of online metrics that can be manipulated through paid marketing that campaigns launch on social media, and that are in general unscientific.”
Their concerns are valid.
After waiting for more methodological polls to come out, they show that Hillary won among democratic voters.
But, waiting for scientific polls to be conducted over the phone or email doesn’t make sense anymore — there’s no reason to wait.
Online Polling is the Future
Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Kiss Metrics … the list of ways we can collect comprehensive online data is a long one.
The old methods of scientific polling need to catch up to the 21st century. Social media gives us a powerful way to quickly aggregate voters, collect their votes, and collect their data at the same time — a way that lets us collect data first and apply statistical analysis second.
You don’t need to put as much work in to create a representative sample up front when you can collect 100s of thousands of votes right now and narrow survey data down to representative samples after the fact. But, online polling needs work to realize its full potential, too.
Hillary took the win after all the dust settled.
But, this event shows why scientific polling and online polling need to come together.
It’s the perfect example of what Wedgies online polling is working to solve for. We’re going to make it possible to make online polls scientific and predictive.
The next Republican debate is scheduled for October 28th. It's the perfect opportunity to engage your readers by creating a poll. Try it out.
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