As I predicted yesterday, Trump “won” the debate. If one looks at the various reactions, especially from “neverTrumpers” like Ben Shapiro or John Podhoretz, you get pretty much what you’d expect: “whaaaaa, whaaaa, we told you so, he can’t debate, she won.” The trouble is, these people are as out of touch with ordinary Americans as Cankles is.
First, yesterday I said that it would not matter who “won’ the debate (the style points, etc.) What mattered was who the polls said won, and the vast, overwhelming majority say Trump won—often by 20 points or more.
Now of course these polls are unreliable. That’s not the point. For 20 years the Democrats have played this game of controlling the post-debate polls, when they then become the story. Now the shoe is on the other foot because of Trump’s massive, near-total control of social media. (Yesterday he was pulling almost 2 million Twitter mentions before the debate vs. 395,000 Cankles mentions—a whopping 4:1 advantage, very similar to that of Obama in 2008). So Trump’s army votes in the online polls.
This is the modern internet version of the phrase, “It’s not who votes that counts but who counts the votes.” It’s not who wins the debate that counts but who counts who wins the debate, and right now that’s the internet-active public. Whiny neverTrumpers like Podhoretz still have no clue what has really happened, but this was the same exact scenario we saw in the primaries: Ted Cruz, or John Kasich, or Marco Rubio (according to the media elites) “won” every one of those debates, yet Trump really “won” the polls afterwards (almost every time) and crushed them in the poll that counted, votes. The same thing is playing out now.
In many ways this is rewarding and funny, for the drive-by media two decades ago decided that to expand their viewership/readership they had to get more “interactive,” so they began including polls. Moreover, they convinced themselves they had to actually pay attention to these and report on these. Uh oh! Here comes Trump with his SocMed dominance and they are now hoisted on their own digital petards.
So those who didn’t see the debate see that Trump won. But of those who did see the debate—how did they score it?
There are some key indicators. This article from a Pennsylvania bar suggests Trump gained ground with Indies, Cankles lost ground. This article from North Carolina shows that if Trump didn’t gain, Cankles again lost ground. Frank Luntz, whose “focus groups” with their dials are often suspect, did not have Trump spiking much (even among his supporters), but they did have Cankles tank badly among independents and undecided voters—again, indicating she turned off those she desperately needs to reach.
Then there is this poll by Gravis taken immediately post-debate. This is fascinating. Some 95% of those polled did not change their mind, but 4% percent did: of those, 3% went to Trump, 1% to Cankles, for a net shift of 2% undecideds to Trump. That would be the famous “undecideds breaking 2:1 in favor of the challenger,” and would mean that in most polls where you have undecideds at about 12%, Trump will add another 8% to his totals, roughly putting him at 52% . . . right where I’ve had him since January.
Moreover, at the bottom of the Gravis poll, there is the question, “If you did not change your mind, who are you still for?” Trump wins that 48-43—but wait! That does NOT include those who DID change their minds, so the final actual poll result is .Trump 51, Cankles 44.
You Da Man (or woman?)