Pro-Trump Trolls Drove Gabbard, DeBlasio Support In Online Post-Debate Polls

Democratic presidential hopeful US Representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district Tulsi Gabbard (C) speak to Governor of Washington Jay Inslee (R), former US Representative for Maryland's 6th congressional di... Democratic presidential hopeful US Representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district Tulsi Gabbard (C) speak to Governor of Washington Jay Inslee (R), former US Representative for Maryland's 6th congressional district John Delaney and former US Representative for Texas' 16th congressional district Beto O'Rourke during a brake of the first Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season hosted by NBC News at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, Florida, June 26, 2019. (Photo by JIM WATSON / AFP) (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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A swarm of pro-Trump trolls from Reddit and 4chan drove up Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s (D-HI) numbers in a post-debate Drudge poll, getting the results into The Hill and The Daily Mail.

The Hill ran a piece headlined: “Drudge instant poll shows Gabbard winning first Democratic debate in landslide.” The Daily Mail went with: “First poll has Tulsi Gabbard as the shock winner of the first Democratic debate and Beto O’Rourke as the clear loser.”

The Gabbard campaign was quick to capitalize on the attention, sending out on email blast on Thursday declaring that “multiple news outlets declared Tulsi to be the breakaway winner of Wednesday’s debate.”

According to NBC News, the trolls’ efforts, called “brigading,” netted Gabbard 40 percent of the votes in the Drudge poll. A separate effort launched on Reddit’s r/The_Donald channel urged users to vote for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in a bid to drive the rest of the Democratic field further left.

These communities practiced similar tactics in 2016 to throw President Donald Trump more support in the hopes that the unscientific polling would be picked up by mainstream outlets and boost his standing.

As NBC points out, reputable polls are much more difficult to manipulate as they happen over the phone and with a predetermined spread of respondents representing a spectrum of diversity and political engagement.

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Notable Replies

  1. Troll, meet Bot.

    Bot - Troll.

    Let’s try not to be too obvious about this affair.

  2. Like anyone fell for that nonsense.

  3. Are you familiar with Chuck Todd?

  4. Yep - and he’s an idiot, hands down.

    Maybe I should amend that to read something like anyone with more than a scintilla of critical thinking?

  5. Chris Matthews, aka Tweety, was gushing over DeBlasio’s performance to him (DeBlasio) last night.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

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