Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the first Democratic presidential debate by a 23-point margin over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), according to an online poll for NBC News released on Friday.
The SurveyMonkey nationwide poll, which began as soon as the debate and ended Thursday morning, showed Clinton did the “best job” according to 56 percent of respondents while Sanders did the “best job” according to 33 percent. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee earned a “best job” rating of 1 percent.
Former Sen. Jim Webb (VA) was the only debate participant to earn no rating.
In the poll, Clinton led the Democratic primary at 45 percent, followed by Sanders at 31 and Vice President Joe Biden at 10 percent. O’Malley and Webb both earned 1 percent.
The poll’s results came from 4,898 adults nationwide who were at least 18 years old. The margin of error was plus or minus 2 points. From the NBC News methodology: “Respondents for this non-probability survey were selected from the nearly three million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day.”
But SHE WON DEBATE BY 23 POINTS screams the headline. I mean, does that even qualify as a poll?
How can you calculate a MoE if it is a non-probability survey??
No, it does not.
By using the TLAR method while taking into account the WAG factor and the GIGO quotient.
If TPM is going to ‘report’ on one non-scientific poll, why not be thorough about it and report many more such measures taken after the debate? To wit:
“…Sanders won the CNN focus group, the Fusion focus group, and the Fox News focus group; in the latter, he even converted several Hillary supporters. He won the Slate online poll, CNN/Time online poll, 9News Colorado, The Street online poll, Fox5 poll, the conservative Drudge online poll and the liberal Daily Kos online poll. There wasn’t, to this writer’s knowledge, a poll he didn’t win by at least an 18-point margin. But you wouldn’t know this from reading the establishment press. The New York Times, the New Yorker, CNN, Politico, Slate, New York Magazine, and Vox all unanimously say Hillary Clinton cleaned house. What gives?”
source: http://bit.ly/1GHpFk8