ith any big political event like tonight’s debate between Vice Presidential candidates Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin, the pundits are out in force before, during, and after the debate. Of course also present are the spin masters from both the Republican and Democratic parties. Additionally, all the news outlets will be interviewing people on the street, in neighborhood bars, and at local watch parties. Tonight, they’re all trying to answer “Who won the debate?”
My advice is to ignore them all. The purpose of the debate is to impress a majority of voters, and thus the only indicator that counts is a random poll of a large number of people. As of this writing, here’s what I’ve found and you can of course check the links because some of these polls are still in progress.
| Biden | Palin | Neither | Votes | |
| CNN Quick Poll | 70% | 26% | 4% | 205000 |
| WSJ Quick Poll | 52% | 46% | 1.1% | 62251 |
Of course, the quick polls always say that they aren’t scientific. That’s because they aren’t random and they usually represent the bias of the readers of that publication. But they do usually have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of respondents. So, its also good to factor in the random polls that they news and polling organization do.
A CNN poll of debate watchers now shows Biden the winner, 51% to Palin’s 36%. Any one of the polls taken alone might be too small to be representative of the larger population or biased, but by taking a look at several polls, and considering the number of respondents for each, you can get a much better idea of who won than from listening to pundits and on-the-street interviews.
Why only look at these polls? Because the spinsters will say their side won even if the candidate broke down into tears and stormed off the stage. The news’ interviews of people on the street will have people supporting both sides, and they can’t interview enough people to be representative. You would think that pundits, who are supposed to be experts, would have something meaningful to say. But the evidence that I’ve seen shows that they often have no idea what the voters are really thinking. So their opinion isn’t much better than asking your spouse or your bartender.
You can realize this for yourself by taking a look at the CNN report cards. I did an analysis of the pundit scores versus the reader’s scores for the convention speeches as well as for the first Obama-McCain debate, and the pundit’sopinions are frequently far off from the readers. Check out the table below.
| Readers | CNN Report Card Average | |
| John McCain Spech |
D | C |
| Rudy Giuliani Speech | D | B+ |
| Sarah Palin Speech | C | A |
| Fred Thompson Speech | C | A |
| George Bush Speech | D | B |
| Joe Lieberman Speech | D | D+ |
| Palin Pick Speech | C | C |
| Barack Obama Speech |
A | A- |
| Bill Clinton Speech | A | A |
| Joe Biden Speech | B | A- |
| Obama 1st Debate | B | B |
| McCain 1st Debate | D | B+ |
We can create a better future together if we know the facts and understand the issues. But, too much politics is aimed at confusing the issues to get votes or ratings. I'm trying to clarify the issues for myself, and I'll share it with you. Civil, authentic dialogue is welcome. 
6 comments
Mike Lawasaki says:
October 3, 2008 at 7:44 am (UTC -7 )
I think CNN’s viewers are left-wing liberals so therefore the results will be skewed. Poll results are attributed by their viewing audiences which is never correct.
Doug says:
October 3, 2008 at 8:13 am (UTC -7 )
I would agree with you when it comes to the “quick poll” that they do on their site. That was also very skewed toward Obama in the first debate. Also I have heard that a Fox poll had the complete reverse numbers. However, when CNN does an actual survey, I think they apply solid methodology and do not only survey their readers.
Erin says:
October 3, 2008 at 4:13 pm (UTC -7 )
In reference to the accuracy of reporting of the polls and viewer responses, I can honestly prove to you that the results are truly skewed and often pre-planned. You can see for yourself; CNN’s report card on last night’s VP debate (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/02/vp.debate.reportcard/index.html) has clearly been planned to bring Biden out as the winner. When a person votes for Palin first, offering a mid or high grade, it will automatically convert any low grade for Biden to an ‘A’ or a ‘B’, displaying it as your vote.
As a career programmer of media like this, I can assure you that this is no accident and it would require specific code to achieve these kinds of results.
I realize that CNN is a biased network, but they have reached a new low when they override our ‘voice’.
Doug says:
October 3, 2008 at 6:18 pm (UTC -7 )
That was very interesting, Erin. I was kind of doubtful but I went and tried the poll and there is something squirrelly with it.
The first time, I just did view results for Palin, and it said the readers gave her a D. Then I voted, and it said the readers have her a B! Of course my one vote of 40000 or so couldn’t have made much difference.
Then I viewed overall results for Biden, which was a B. After I voted, my score was upleveled one grade! The overall total was still the same.
But that got me thinking, since I am on Firefox 2, so I went to my IE 6 and tried it again and everything worked as expected.
So maybe its just a coding error or a Firefox problem?
Erin says:
October 3, 2008 at 7:36 pm (UTC -7 )
Though it is difficult to say without seeing the code, I can say in good conscience that it would be pretty difficult to pass this off as a mistake or error in the code. In order for it to function where one choice affects the results of a subsequent choice, there would have to be an ‘if/then/else’ conditional statement written.
Since I design and manage websites, I have all the major browsers on my system for testing. When I first noticed this, the first thing I did was check it on other platforms to see if it was a coding error. The poll changed my vote for Biden on every occasion except for once on Firefox 3.
I emailed CNN to alert them of their ‘error’ and I don’t suppose I should hold my breath for a response from them.
It is interesting huh?
Doug says:
October 4, 2008 at 7:20 am (UTC -7 )
Yeah, its kind of suspicious. Sadly you are probably right that they won’t respond but if they do I hope you’ll let me know.