As we all know, MSNBC hosted the first Republican debate of the '08 cycle at the Reagan presidential library Thursday night. They also set up a poll at their website to rate the candidates.
They are now interpreting their results to tell us that Romney "won".
But according to the results, he didn't. Why are they intentionally mis-representing their own results?
Update: ABC is up to the same shenanigans and C-Span lets the cat out of the bag.
See here for questions pondering what should be done about this:
Upset!- Freiheit
More beyond the flip...
Exhibit A: The polling results before the debate:
As you can see, even though this poll is unscientific, it does mimic the popular opinion going into the debate. Giuliani leading, McCain second, and Romney third. The rest of the candidates are lost in the background noise. This indicates that the polling is reasonably indicative of the MSNBC viewers.
Exhibit B: The polling results after the debate:
Very clearly (with 77,000 respondents thus far) Mitt Romney did very well, but he came in a distant second to Ron Paul. Furthermore...
Exhibit C: The viewers rate the six attributes that determine the victor
Again, Romney did pretty well, but not nearly as well as Paul.
So naturally, if MSNBC is going to point to these results to declare a winner, they're going to point to Paul, right?
Wrong.
In fact, if you troll through the MSNBC debates section, there is no mention whatsoever of Ron Paul's apparent victory at the debate. There's no mention of Ron Paul whatsoever!
The respondents are clearly perturbed about this fact on their message board.
Throughout their televised "analysis" yesterday (yeah, I watched), they mentioned Ron Paul 3 times by my count, and only admitted that he actually won according to their poll once. Not incidentally, they also chose that moment to state that their polling was unscientific. In addition, the few times they did mention him, they framed it as
#1) He did "pretty well"
and
#2) "He can't win".
So all this begs the question: If their polling indicates that Paul actually won the debate, why can't they just cover the news as it is? Very likely, he can't win, but why crown a false victor in their coverage? Why not simply report the results as they are; cover the story as it appears?
It's very evident that MSNBC doesn't want to give Ron Paul any press. Why not? They know that the two things that will kill a campaign are
- the collective belief that a candidate "can't win"
- lack of recognition
They are clearly attempting to use their influence to alter the results of the Republican primary process.
Why? I mean, if the Republicans happen to nominate a candidate who "can't win", isn't that good news for Dems? This also raises more questions: How are they interfering in the Democratic primary process through their intentionally skewed and selective coverage? What's in it for them?
And most importantly: Why are we allowing them to get away with it?
edit
ABC News self-freepery
ABC News is apparently in on it too. Take a look at their "who won the debate" poll. Notice that only one of the candidates is conspicuously absent? Guess who?
C-SPAN lets the cat out of the bag
Another Kossack has commented that C-Span had a call-in poll on their Republican only line and he won there too.
SC GOP getting flooded with calls for Paul
From theMSNBC discussion thread:
out of curiosity I persoanlly called the SC GOP headquarters yesterday to inquire, and they confirmed that Dr. Paul has been issued an invitation. I also read it in a press release but I didn't mark the source.
By the by, per the receptionist, the SC GOP office has been flooded with calls concerning this issue, which most definitely made me smile.