This morning, Time magazine announced the short list for the person of the year 2015, and the winner will be announced Wednesday morning (12/9/15):
Time Announces Short List for 2015 Person of the Year
The finalists are (in order listed on the webpage):
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi
Black Lives Matter activists
Caitlyn Jenner
Travis Kalanick
Angela Merkel
Vladimir Putin
Hassan Rouhani
Donald Trump
Noticeably absent from the list are the two highest vote-getters from the Time poll (the third highest vote-getter has previously been person of the year):
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has won the online readers’ poll for TIME Person of the Year, topping some of the world’s best-known politicians, activists and cultural figures as the most influential person of 2015 among those who voted.
The Vermont Senator won with a little more than 10% of the vote when the poll closed Sunday at midnight. That’s well ahead of Pakistani girls’ education activist Malala Yousafzai, who was in second place at 5.2%, and Pope Francis, TIME’s 2013 Person of the Year, who finished third with 3.7%.
Sanders also placed far ahead President Obama (3.5%) and ahead other 2016 candidates, including Republican Donald Trump (1.8%) and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton (1.4%).
This was a second time for Malala Yousafzai to do well in reader polling:
So Putin and Trump made the final list while Bernie and Malala did not. Ok.
Factual Error
I did not see any dust-up the day following the second Democratic primary debate when Time posted on Facebook a mis-cast of Bernie’s response about raising the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans:
As you’ll see in the image below, TIME claimed “Bernie Sanders has said he would raise the marginal tax rate for the wealthiest Americans to 90%”. See video below for what was actually said.
In fact, what Bernie said was he did not yet have a specific number but that it would NOT be as high as 90% as it was under Eisenhower:
Reading the text of the announcement (paragraphs not included here for fair use reasons — please see link above) it would appear that Time decided to keep Bernie from the short list because they do not believe he will win the Democratic nomination.
Following that logic, since Donald Trump IS on their short list, is this an indication (a prediction, even?) that they believe he WILL be the Republican nominee?
What gives, TIME?
Full List of Poll Results.