CNN Democratic Debate

[Pyrrho]

Here is an interesting article that some of you might want to read:

Did Hillary Clinton "Win" the Debate? 

A little secret of political journalism is that the vast majority of it is just some jerk’s opinion, which has a scientific value roughly equal to your own idiot opinion.

Take last night’s Democratic presidential debate, for example. The immediate post-debate narrative across virtually the entire mainstream media has been that Hillary Clinton “won” the debate. The New York Times slobbered over her “sure-footed performance” and “crisp answers to nearly every question.” Similarly, the Washington Post praised her “self-assured performance” and declared that she “dominated the debate.” Slate says that “Hillary Clinton Won the CNN Debate With a Surprisingly Spectacular Performance.” New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait said that Hillary was “the best candidate onstage” and her performance was a “triumph.” CNN itself, the host of the debate, declared Hillary the official “Winner,” with Bernie Sanders’ performance labeled “Unclear” and the others on stage labeled “Losers.”

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http://gawker.com/did-hillary-clinton-wi...1736498207

A bit later in the article:

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So: where is all of this evidence that Hillary Clinton “won” the debate last night? It is.. nowhere, as far as I can tell. The only real sort of evidence that a candidate won or lost a debate would be a bunch of statistically significant quality polls showing clear, strong voter sentiment that a single candidate “won.” Is that what the mainstream media is touting here? No. Not even numbers factory Vox could come up with a single such poll in their debate explainer. There were several large online polls, which are a fairly degraded form of data that can end up measuring enthusiasm of a candidate’s base more than actual total voter preference. But to the extent those online polls have any value, Bernie Sanders won 68% in the MSNBC.com poll; Bernie Sanders won 55% in the Daily Kos poll; Bernie Sanders won 54% in the Time.com poll; and Bernie Sanders overwhelmingly won CNN’s own Facebook poll, not that you would know it from what the pundits were saying on CNN itself. CNN’s own focus group also said that Bernie Sanders won, and Fusion’s focus group said that Bernie Sanders won, and Fox News’ focus group said that Bernie Sanders won.

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