Way back in the early 2000s, when Daily Kos was but a wee baby, web polls were a big deal. These are polls on a website where anyone can vote—and often however many times they want to. In other words, they have zero credibility. And back in the day, right-wing sites, particularly Free Republic, would list all the web polls on AOL, MSN, and other now-diminished or -defunct websites, and urge their readers to go vote so they could all pretend their side had won. It was called “Freeping.”
By 2004, the Daily Kos community got in on the action, like with this diary, and we got better than the right at freeping. It wasn’t long before they quit the practice, since it was no fun sending their readers to an online poll we had already “won.” The idea of freeping was lost to the times, a silly artifact that no one missed because no one actually cared about those web polls.
Until Donald Trump last night, that is.
Right after his presidential debate with Kamala Harris on Tuesday night, Trump walked into the media spin room and claimed that his crushing defeat was a stunning success.
“It was the best debate I’ve ever personally—that I’ve had,” Trump said. “We’re getting polls that show 92 to 6, 88 to 11, and we're having a lot of great polls that just came out."
The claims left many people scratching their heads, given that the only post-debate poll was CNN’s, which found that Vice President Kamala Harris won the debate, 63% to Trump’s 37%—a poll in which almost a third of Trump supporters admitted their guy lost.
So what the heck was Trump talking about? The answer could be found on his Truth Social feed, where he wrote very late on Tuesday night, “Comrade Kamala Harris is going around wanting another Debate because she lost so badly - Just look at the Polls!“
The post included images of four “polls”:
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A Newsmax web poll, which showed Trump winning the debate 93% to 6%. Newsmax, of course, is a right-wing publication. Voting in the poll requires giving up your email address, phone number, and area code, so it makes sense that the results page doesn’t say how many people voted. The only noteworthy part of this unscientific online poll is that 6% of Newsmax viewers admitted their guy lost.
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A web poll that CSPAN posted on X, which right-wing outlets and social media freeped.
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A random web poll on X. (Notably, the only person this account follows is Elon Musk.)
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A web poll that far-right outlet Daily Caller posted on X.
Obviously, those “polls” are as credible as the one I’ve attached at the bottom of this story. The difference is, Harris and the Democrats won’t be stupid enough to walk around pretending it means anything.
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