Bernie Maniacs Go Truther Over Debate Polls

They are resting their case on pretty thin gruel. Chris Matthews has their back.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/chris-matthews-uses-fox-news-focus.html

Amanda Marcotte captures their meme well:

"Things really kicked off with this short piece by Adam Johnson of Alternet that argues that, “by all objective measures”, Sanders won the debate. “[T]he very idea of ‘winning’ a debate is silly to me,” Johnson sniffs (causing me to wonder if he also feels morally superior to those of us who are invested in the process of “winning” an election), but despite this, he’s extremely angry that the “the echo chamber musings of establishment liberal pundits” pointed to a Clinton win instead. Johnson pulls back from outright accusing the pundits of conspiracy, but already Sanders supporters are taking it to the next level, starting a Change.org petition accusing CNN, Time Warner, and “SuperPACs” of somehow conspiring to silence the truth."

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/15/bernie_sanders_truthers_step_down_theres_no_conspiracy_to_hide_that_he_won_the_debate/

I've noticed this. The Bernie folks are both 

1. Above anything as crude as winning or losing a debate. 

2. Sure that Bernie actually won the debate. 

In the comments section though a Bernie guy, Howievermont seems not to have read her right:

The person who "won" the debate is the person that the majority of PEOPLE liked best, not the majority of pundits. You are free to voice your opinion that Hillary was better than Bernie, but to do so without mentioning that EVERY POLL of viewers placed Bernie ahead of Hillary is disingenuous at best."

I responded to him thus:

"The online polls are worthless. Most of them showed HRC losing not only to Bernie but to Jim Webb. The focus groups have all been wrong up until now."

"The closest thing to an objective measure is Gravis Marketing which shows what most of us saw. Bernie did well but HRC was better. "

http://www.oann.com/dncdebate/

That Webb cleaned her clock as well as Bernie did kind of cinched it. Here is the invaluable Daily News Bin:

"The first democratic party debate went well for both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, but by any objective measure she was more ready for prime time. Most political pundits of all stripes concluded that that Hillary won. And accordingly the overnight professionally-conducted poll from Gravis showed that about two-thirds of democratic voters also believed Hillary won. Yet the online self-service polls on the websites various news outlets showed that Bernie won the debate by absurd scores like 82-13. And when that happens, everyone knows why."

http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/bernie-sanders-fans-rig-online-debate-polls-then-complain-when-no-one-takes-it-seriously/22827/

The trouble is that online polls have little value in terms of predictive power but these Jim Webb by a mile and Bernie by eight mile polls are totally worthless:

"Johnson, unlike the pundits he decries, actually does hold himself out as an “objective” observer. To bolster his claim that Sanders objectively won the debate—not that he trucks with such nonsense as “winning” debates!—he cites the focus groups and online polls that showed Sanders as a winner. He admits that they are “obviously not scientific”, but then still rests his entire argument on them as the “only relatively objective metric we have.”

"Well, they may be “objective”, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t crap. Online polls are the worst possible measure of public opinion, except when it comes to focus groups.As Nate Silver explained in 2012, “central challenge that Internet polls face is in collecting a random sample, which is the sine qua non of a scientific survey.” The polls that Johnson cites, however, don’t even try. They’re polls that are open to anyone who wants to vote. Polls like that usually get flooded by highly motivated people who are on a mission—such as Sanders supporters—and therefore have no relationship whatsoever to what the average person is thinking."

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/15/bernie_sanders_truthers_step_down_theres_no_conspiracy_to_hide_that_he_won_the_debate/

The trouble with the Bernie Maniacs is that if they were going to fix the online polls they could have at least be believable. But 82-13? Or Jim Webb crushing Hillary?