Like many of you I watched the VP debate half hoping that Palin would make an obvious gaffe and make a fool of herself in the debate. Like most of you I knew that was unlikely to happen due to the leeway that the debate rules give a debater to not answer a question directly. Like most of you I thought Joe Biden won both handily on substance and style and I cringed at what I perceived to be Palin's phony folksiness and robotic recitation of talking points.
I also watched assidously the CNN trendline, which confirmed my impression that Joe Biden scored better than Palin with voters. I was further reassured by the post-debate snap polls...
Yet, I confess I'm still a nervous wreck and still worry that my perceptions are somehow out of touch with the perceptions of middle America (and the perceptions of the all important undecided voters in swing states).
So, looking for further reassurance, I decided I would do a little unscientific experiment using google search: I compared the number of hits that each of the phrases "Biden won" and "Palin won" returned on Google...
I almost had a heart attack! Here are the results:
"Palin won"
445,000 hits
"Biden won"
90,700 hits
WTF!!!
4x more google hits for "Palin won" than for "Biden won". That can't be good, can it???
And then it hit me: Look at the second hit on the list for "Palin won"... The quote actually reads: "Palin won't cooperate"... I then realized that the "Palin won" query was returning thousands of "Palin won't"... Palin won't cooperate, Palin won't answer, Palin won't give interviews... on and on...
So, here are the Boolean Google queries for ("Palin won") AND (NOT("Palin won't", compared to the corresponding Boolean Google queries for (Biden won" AND NOT ("Biden won't"):
"Palin won"
51,400 hits
"Biden won"
67,800 hits
Pheew! That's more like it! (although, if you ask me, I don't know how theres over 50 thousand webpages spewing this lie.)
I'm not sure there's a moral to this story, but I'll certainly do my best to stop being such a worrier and a concern troll. Promise!